This year has already seen special memories made for Katie Archibald and now she can add Track World Cup omnium silver on home soil to the tally - but for the reigning world champion, it wasn’t quite enough.
Having sat out the leg in Poland last week, this was Archibald’s first World Cup appearance of the season, reserved for the Manchester track she calls home.
Wearing the rainbow jersey, she opened her omnium campaign with a fourth-place finish in the scratch race, before placing second in the ensuing tempo race.
But it was the elimination race in which Archibald really came into her own, lifting the Manchester crowd onto her feet with an astonishing attack over the final two laps to win.
That placed her just six points shy of the USA’s Jennifer Valente heading into the final event of the omnium - the points race.
Two sprint wins in a row saw Archibald come within just two points of the lead, before narrowing that further to one, making for a tense finish.
But in the end, Archibald couldn’t hold out as Valente took the title, Denmark’s Amalie Dideriksen placing third.
“When we got to that final sprint, I knew I only needed one point,” she told British Cycling.
“We had Valente on the back foot and I knew I had to start getting ready to punch it.
“I didn’t have the strengths to play against her - we’ve both got the same cards and she played them better.
“I hesitated in the scratch race and I think that’s probably the thing I’m kicking myself about most.
“But it was all there in the points race and it didn’t go my way.”
Elsewhere on day one at the National Cycling Centre, Great Britain’s men’s team pursuit quartet sealed their place in the gold medal final with a remarkable victory over France, knocking more than two seconds from their qualification time.
The Brits - Ed Clancy, Steven Burke, Kian Emadi and Ollie Wood - will face Denmark in Saturday’s final.
In the men’s team sprint, the British trio of Joe Truman, Ryan Owens and Jack Carlin missed out on bronze by the narrowest of margins, beaten to the medal by the Netherlands by just 0.149 seconds.
It came just a week after they had won bronze in Poland, and for Owens, they couldn’t have been more disappointed with the result.
“It was one of our more disappointing sprints from the three of us,” he said. “We had it in us to do better than that.
“I had such a bad slip off the line at the beginning and I was fighting to recover it the whole time, and I never really got back on it for the rest of the team.
“To come away with fourth is a bit disappointing but looking back, with the training we’ve put in and everything else, I don’t think we can be too disheartened.”
It wasn’t to be for women’s team sprint stars Katy Marchant and Sophie Capewell either, missing out on the finals at the hands of the eventual German champions.
In the men’s scratch race, World Championship bronze medallist Chris Latham could only manage ninth, with 100% ME’s Matt Walls finishing two places higher.
While in the women’s event, Emily Kay finished seventh and Ellie Dickinson in 11th. Photo: SWpix.com