Sunday 17 January 2016 15:46, UK
Great Britain's team sprint trio claimed gold on the second day of the UCI Track Cycling World Cup event in Hong Kong.
Philip Hindes, Jason Kenny and Matthew Crampton produced a fine run in qualifying to secure a place in Saturday's final, and they continued their much-improved form with a narrow win over Poland.
Their winning time of 43.751 seconds was marginally quicker than in qualifying, with Callum Skinner having come into the team in place of Crampton, and five-hundredths of a second faster than the Polish trio of Maciej Bielecki, Kamil Kuczynski and Mateusz Lipa.
Russia finished in the bronze medal position by beating Australia in a race-off, with Britain's victory enough to move them into the overall team sprint lead after three events - they leapfrog Germany who could only finish 10th in Hong Kong.
There was a bronze medal for Britain in the men's team pursuit with an inexperienced line-up of Oliver Wood, Germain Burton, Kian Emadi and Chris Latham beating Germany in the race for third. Australia claimed gold by beating Denmark in the final.
Mark Cavendish had a mixed day in the men's omnium, ending the day in fourth place overall after finishing second in two of the first three events.
Cavendish, who is bidding to qualify for the Rio Olympics, was beaten by Kazakhstan's Artyom Zakharov in the opening scratch race and narrowly denied by Frenchman Thomas Boudat in the elimination race.
But his hopes of a better halfway position were dashed by a poor effort in the individual pursuit, where he could only finish a lowly 16th behind Denmark's Lasse Norman Hansen.
Zakharov leads overall on 112 points ahead of Boudat on 108, with Cavendish some way adrift on 86.
There was disappointment for the women's team sprint pairing of Jess Varnish and Katy Marchant, who were beaten by Rusvelo's Daria Shmeleva and Anastasiia Voinova by over half-a-second in the final.
And the women's team pursuit quartet also had to settle for silver after being narrowly beaten by Canada in the final.
The Canadians started strongly and led by nearly a second at the halfway stage, but the British team of Emily Nelson, Elinor Barker, Ciara Horne and Joanna Rowsell-Shand closed all the way to the line before going down by three-tenths of a second.
Laura Trott is in a good position to claim gold in the women's omnium after an intriguing battle with America's Sarah Hammer in the first three events.
Trott finished fifth in the scratch race, with Hammer sixth, and won the elimination race ahead of Hammer after finishing second to her main rival in the individual pursuit.
