British Cycling’s men’s track endurance coach Paul Manning admits he is intrigued to see how Laura Trott, Ed Clancy, Dani King and Jon Dibben fare at this weekend’s GP Prueba in Valencia.
Trott, Clancy, King and Dibben will begin the qualifying process to compete in the multi-event omnium discipline throughout the UCI Track Cycling World Cup season in Spain at the weekend.
Trott won the women’s omnium title at the London 2012 Olympics but surrendered her world title to Sarah Hammer in February, settling for silver, while Dibben placed eighth in the men’s event in Minsk.
Dibben is the only one of the four who didn’t compete at London 2012 with King joining Trott and Joanna Rowsell in winning gold in the women’s team pursuit while Clancy led Britain’s men to victory in the same event.
He also claimed bronze in the omnium having won the world title in 2010 and European crown in 2011 with Clancy, Trott, King and Dibben all currently on road duty with their trade teams.
Trott and Dibben start the qualification process with a good baseline of UCI points acquired from the World Championships and coach Manning is relishing what the four might produce in Valencia.
“You need 90 points to qualify for the omnium at the World Cups and you need to retain someone in the top 24 in the rankings,” Manning told British Cycling.
“We’re sending the four riders out to GP Prueba to begin the process of gaining sufficient qualification points so that we can keep our options open during the World Cup season.
“If you win the omnium at these events, you score 80 points so you’re obliged to compete in at least two events, maybe more if it’s a good quality field.
“The younger riders have the added option of the under23 European Championships to score points at, but for the elite riders, the competition options are more limited so I’m expecting there to be some big name riders at Valencia, trying to bag their points early on.
“They’ve had a fairly short lead-in of track work as they’re following a more road based programme at the moment, so it will be interesting to see how quickly they can transition back to the track.
“It’s been a few months since the worlds so they haven’t done the specifics required for the omnium so we will see how they go across the breadth of events.”
© Sportsbeat 2013