Kilo veteran Queally bids for pursuit spot

By Agence France Presse

Jason Queally, Olympic gold winner in the men’s kilometer at the Sydney Games in 2000, is making an audacious bid for a coveted place in Britain’s world-beating pursuit team at this week’s world track championships.

Queally’s Olympic gold a decade ago is considered the starting point for a hugely successful track program that has since left Britain the undisputed kings of the sport at world and Olympic level.

Now at the age of 40 and two years after retiring, Queally missed out on becoming a member of Britain’s Olympic Sprint team by a tenth of a second. He has now turned his attention to the team pursuit.

Although his place in qualifying for Friday’s race has yet to be secured, Queally has done enough in training and earlier test events to impress Britain’s track coach Shane Sutton.

Sutton recently said Queally could even stake his claim for a place at the London Games in 2012.

“The management have to make the call of ‘do we believe he has the ability to make the podium in London’ and on the evidence of what I just saw, I’d say yes,” Sutton said this month. “He can be an abled-bodied athlete if he wants to be. It is his choice.

“The management will now sit down and see where we go with this guy because although you don’t want to be rocking up with a 40 year old (42 in London), it is a lovely headache to have.”

Using a kilometer or sprint specialist over the first four laps of the pursuit’s 16 laps is not a new idea, although it is somewhat rare in an event which tends to be made up of powerful endurance riders.

Sutton said Britain’s team, considered to be at the cutting edge of the sport in both training and science, would not simply copy others.

“The Aussies put in a kilo rider to the Team Pursuit to do a kilo but we don’t work like that,” he added. “We’re going out there to be the best we can be and no-one is better at research and development than us … we know what it is going to take to win.”

Despite retiring to a life of domestic bliss in 2008, Queally is glad of another bite at the Olympic apple.

“For me, my elite career was all over so to be given a potential second go at it, I decided to give it 100 percent,” he said. “Even if I don’t make it to London, I know I have had the opportunity to go for it. If I’m successful, fantastic, if not, I have given it my best shot.”

Whether he gets his chance or not this week, Sutton and the rest of the British team are in no doubt over Queally’s career-long contribution.

“Let’s all remember who started this. Jason Queally was the kudos for this program taking off in Sydney,” Sutton added

“In the field of battle, when it really matters, the lads will be able to look across to him and say to themselves, we have someone here who is a real warrior, who knows the trenches like nobody else.

“And I think they will see that as a strength.”

FILED UNDER: News / Track