World champion sprinter Emma Finucane and reigning Olympic mountain bike gold medallist Tom Pidcock headline Team GB’s initial cycling squad for Paris 2024.
Pidcock will compete in both the mountain bike event and the road race in Paris.
The 24-year-old became the first Briton to win an Olympic medal of any colour in mountain biking in Tokyo three years ago – although he has the small matter of the Tour de France to contest before defending his title in Paris.
Finucane, who is also Britain’s first female European sprint champion, will make her Olympic bow in the French capital, where the 21-year-old is expected to contest three events on the track.
Team GB is sending its biggest cycling delegation in its Olympic history to the 2024 Games, although the full squad has yet to be confirmed.
Other Olympic medallists announced for the Games include Ethan Hayter, who won madison silver three years ago and will ride on both track and road in Paris, while Jack Carlin, a two-time medallist in Tokyo, leads the men’s sprinters at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome.
Alongside Finucane in the women’s sprint line-up are Katy Marchant, who won individual bronze at the Rio 2016 Olympics, and debutant Sophie Capewell.
Earlier this year, the trio won Track Nations Cup gold – the first gold medal won by a British women’s team sprint squad since late 2012. It is the first Games since London 2012 that GB has fielded a women’s team sprint and they will go into the Olympics top of the world rankings.
In the men’s endurance team, Dan Bigham joins Tokyo Olympians Ethan Vernon, Ollie Wood and Charlie Tanfield as GB bid to regain the men’s team pursuit title they lost three years ago, having previously dominated the event in the previous three Games.
The women’s road and track endurance riders, as well as the BMX racing and freestyle park squads, will be announced on 4 July.
Last week, two-time Olympic gold medallist Katie Archibald said she would miss the Paris Games through injury.
Archibald, who had been expected to contest the women’s team pursuit, omnium and madison, broke two bones in her leg and tore ligaments off the bone after tripping over a step in her garden.
Based on the overall number of medals, Great Britain is the most successful nation in the history of Olympic cycling.
They have won 100 medals across all disciplines, including 38 golds. At the Tokyo Olympics three years ago, Team GB won 12 medals, six of which were gold.
Stephen Park, British Cycling’s performance director, said: “We’re blessed with an incredibly talented, passionate and hungry squad of riders, and we are now fully focused on supporting their final preparations so they can be at their very best come Paris.”
Team GB cycling squad
Men’s track endurance: Dan Bigham, Ethan Hayter, Charlie Tanfield, Ethan Vernon, Ollie Wood, Mark Stewart (travelling reserve)
Men’s track sprint: Jack Carlin, Ed Lowe, Hamish Turnbull, Joe Truman (travelling reserve)
Men’s road: Ethan Hayter (time trial), Tom Pidcock (road race), Josh Tarling (time trial and road race), Stevie Williams (road race), Fred Wright (road race)
Women’s track sprint: Sophie Capewell, Emma Finucane, Katy Marchant, Lowri Thomas (travelling reserve)
Women’s mountain bike: Ella Maclean-Howell, Evie Richards
Men’s mountain bike: Charlie Aldridge, Tom Pidcock
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