Having already won two gold medals in the keirin and sprint, Sir Chris made it a hat-trick by anchoring the Team Sky+HD sprint team to gold with a scintillating ride against a Great Britain trio.

 

As Britain 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 broke the world record in their win.

 

Lizzie Armitstead, Joanna Rowsell and Wendy Houvenaghel set a new best-ever time of 3min 21.875sec in claiming gold - shaving 0.54secs off the previous best.

 

Ed Clancy, Geraint Thomas, Steven Burke and Andy Tennant set a track record of 3:54.395 in their win - just 1.081 down on the world record Britain set at the Beijing Olympics.

 

It meant Britain finished the three-day meeting having won gold in 10 of the 17 events and claimed four silver and a bronze medals.

 

But the biggest bonus was the return to international competition of Sir Chris after his long spell out through injury.

 

He said: "I don't think I could've expected anything more.

 

"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.

 

Clancy said: "It's pretty mega that we've got up there with just me and G [Thomas] from the Olympics."

 

Since those Games, the other two members of the teams, Paul Manning have retired and Bradley Wiggins is currently concentrating on road racing.

 

Clancy said: "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.

 

Houvenaghel said: "We had it in us to break that world record and it's good to deliver."

 

 

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