Sir Chris Hoy starred in a dominant British display in Manchester, with a world record for the women's pursuit team.
Olympic hero continues fine form in World Cup meeting
Sir Chris Hoy maintained his remarkable comeback form as Great Britain sealed their dominance on the final day of the Track World Cup meeting in Manchester.
Despite Hoy returning from his longest ever break from riding, he recovered from Saturday's exploits to anchor the Team Sky+HD sprint team to gold with a scintillating ride against a Great Britain trio.
As Team GB completed a dominant meeting, the pursuit teams produced two sparkling races, with the men winning in the second fastest time in history, while the women's quartet went one better in breaking the world record in their win.
Lizzie Armitstead, Joanna Rowsell and Wendy Houvenaghel set a new best-ever time of 3mins 21.875secs in claiming gold - shaving 0.54secs off the previous best.
Ed Clancy, Geraint Thomas, Steven Burke and Andy Tennant set a track record of three minutes 54.395 seconds in their win - just 1.081secs down on the world record Britain set at the Beijing Olympics.
Golds
Britain claimed 10 golds from 17 events with four silver and a bronze, but Hoy again stole the limelight as he produced a remarkable weekend considering his lengthy time out through injury.
"I don't think I could've expected anything more," said Hoy after anchoring the team containing Jamie Staff and Ross Edgar. "Even this morning when I woke up with sore legs, I don't think I could've expected to go as quick as we went today.
"That last lap was a 13.02 (seconds) and I believe that's the fastest time ever for a third lap of a team sprint. Quicker than Beijing, quicker than anyone's ever done."
In the men's pursuit, Britain caught silver medallists Spain little more than halfway through the four-kilometre event, but continued targeting a record ride, and they did claim the track record but just missed out on the world best.
"It's pretty mega that we've got up there with just me and G (Thomas) from the Olympics," said Clancy, the lead-off man in the Beijing-winning quartet which featured Thomas, Bradley Wiggins and Paul Manning.
Record
"To do a (three minutes) 53 (seconds) here, looking back it's just as good a ride as we did in the Beijing final. We're talking about doing sub-50 rides - I think it's possible."
Not to be outdone, the women's squad, who have been honing their team pursuit skills with the event poised to join the Olympic programme, went one better.
They were thrilled to dip beneath the previous best time set on the same track by Houvenaghel, Rowsell and Rebecca Romero - absent due to the imminent loss of the individual pursuit from the London Games schedule - in winning the 2008 world title.
"We had it in us to break that world record and it's good to deliver," said individual pursuit winner Houvenaghel.
