UCI Track Cycling World Championships

Britain’s Tokyo 2020 team starts to reveal itself slowly as reigning champions and new hopefuls line up in Poland.

Next week’s Track World Championships will provide the clearest indication yet of exactly who will be in the frame for a spot on the plane to Tokyo in 2020. With no international road pros returning to ride, the team is a mixture of current Olympic champions and relative newcomers hoping to secure their spot.

Among those is John Archibald, making his debut for the British team at this level. The 28-year-old Scot rode the Europeans last summer despite not being a full-time member of the Great Britain Cycling Team and has forced himself back into the squad after a blistering set of individual pursuit rides this winter.

In December he posted a new national record of 4.10.584, becoming the first Brit to better Chris Boardman’s 1996 world record done in the Superman position. In January he went faster still, posting a 4.09.