Thomas takes gold but Boardman's pursuit world record remains

By Steven Chicken, Sportsbeat, in Manchester

GERAINT Thomas raced to pursuit victory at the opening UCI World Cup event in Manchester but insisted he wouldn't chase gold at next year's World Championship.

FLYING: Geraint Thomas beat Belgium's Dominque Cornu to win the opening World Cup pursuit title (Getty Images)

Thomas recorded the second fastest time in history to reach the final and then convincingly beat Belgium's Dominque Cornu in the final while Ukrainian Vitaliy Shchedov took bronze.

"I'm not going chasing the pursuit world title this winter, I'm concentrating totally on the road next year and Team Sky," said Thomas, who slowed down after overhauling Cornu, meaning he couldn't challenge Chris Boardman's 13-year old world record.

"I was a bit shocked to catch Cornu to be honest, he's a very classy rider and I was on him before I expected at the end and didn't think about riding on. Everybody is now telling me I should have!

"Ever since Beijing I knew I had some really quick times in me and after a frustrating first half of the season on the road due to injury.

"I've come here in really good form and I wanted to see exactly what I could do."

Australia's Belinda Goss won the women's scratch race ahead of Russian Evgeniya Romanyuta, while Great Britain's Lizzie Armitstead - last year's winner in Manchester - settled for tenth.

Chris Newton produced a typically consistent performance to win the men’s points race ahead of Hong Kong’s Ho Ting Kwok.

“That was tough,” he admitted.

“The crowd were fantastic. You can really hear them, not so much when you’re sprinting flat-out, but when you’re recovering you can see them getting excited and it gives you that extra bit of motivation to hang in there and get the job done."

Newton’s specialty points race is set to be dropped from the London 2012 Olympic programme in order to make way for more women’s events.

He plans to refocus his attentions on the omnium, cycling’s version of the decathlon, where riders race over five different disciplines across two days.

“There’s nothing much I can do about the proposals, I’ve just got to kind of suck it and see,” he added.

“But there's the omnium coming up but it just gets harder and harder as you get older. Physically I’m capable of doing it, but mentally, it’s just other commitments, it’s a lot of sacrifice for you.

“The events are all shorter, but when they’re all held over two or three days, you need to be able to recover really well after each event and that’s my forte.”