Olympic sprint champions have 'nothing to lose' at Track World Championships

Great Britain’s gold-medal-winning team sprint trio from the Paris Olympics have “absolutely nothing to lose” at this week’s UCI Track World Championships, Katy Marchant has said.

Marchant, who won the Olympic title alongside teammates Emma Finucane and Sophie Capewell in Paris, will vie for a rainbow jersey in the three-rider event this Wednesday. The trio go into the championships as the clear favourites, having broken the world record this August.

“I think naturally the intensity has dropped off a little bit [since the Olympics], but we’re still wanting to go to the World Championships and win at the end of the day,” Marchant told Cycling Weekly.

“It took a conversation when we first came back. The three of us were like, ‘Are we doing this for a bit of fun? Or are we doing this to go win? Is everyone on the same page? What do we want out of this?’ I think, within 30 seconds, we all turned around and were like, ‘We want to go win the World Championships’.”

At the Worlds in Ballerup, Denmark this week, Marchant, Finucane and Capewell will be without their German rivals – winners of the last four world titles – whose A-team have opted to skip this year’s event. Marchant believes the British trio now have a “golden opportunity” to win the title – one GB hasn't won since 2008 – but she's also keen to stress there's no pressure to do so.

“We have absolutely nothing to lose here, because we are Olympic champions, and we are world record holders as it stands. That was something that was the absolute focus, right from the start, when this project began,” the 31-year-old said. “Win or lose, that takes nothing away from what we achieved seven or eight weeks ago now.”

In Paris, the British squad broke the world record three times en route to the gold medal, beating New Zealand with a time of 45.186 seconds in the final. Similar to Germany’s A-team, the Olympic silver medallists have also opted to forego the event in Ballerup.

Who does Marchant see as GB’s medal rivals? “You can never count out anybody”, she replied, going on to cite the Chinese, Dutch and Mexicans in particular.

“What people will talk about in 10, 20 years is the year we became Olympic and world champions in the same year. No one’s going to talk about who was there. It’s not going to be an easy feat to go and win this World Championships title. I think that’s something we’ve had to be really conscious of over the last six weeks.

“Just because we’re Olympic champions, we’re gifted nothing going into this World Championships. The grind continues, basically.”

Marchant, who won the European title in the 500m time trial in January, will also target three other events at this week’s Worlds: the keirin, the individual sprint, and the 500m TT.

“I want to leave a legacy in this sport,” she said. “It would be really freaking cool to be European champion, Olympic champion, and world champion in one year.”