Victoria sets gold standard

Victoria Pendleton won her third gold in the keirin and Chris Hoy his second in the kilometre sprint as Britain ended the world track championships with seven golds from half of the events they contested.

Medals by the kilo: Pendleton celebrates her world title success

Only one other country, Australia, won even a second gold.

Sixteen months before the Olympic Games in Beijing, Britain has sent a message that the rest of the world will be riding for the lesser medals.

"Winning a medal has become average in this team so you have to make sure it's a bit special," said Pendleton.

"I'm delighted with all the medals but the sprint was the best one. It's the one I've trained for. It's the only one in the Olympics."

The 'kilo' has been dropped from the 2008 Games so 2004 champion Hoy will concentrate on team sprint and keirin next year.

"I knew it was my last competitive kilo, so it was important to win," said the Scot. "It was way faster than I expected. It makes up for the disappointment of missing out by such a tiny margin on the first day."

That was the first of his three medals, a team sprint gold lost to the French by a margin of twothousandth of a second.

Yesterday he rode last as defending champion, surpassing the time of Frenchman Francois Pervis by almost a second and his own winning time of a year ago by 0.362sec. Hoy's team-mate Jamie Staff won bronze.

Now Hoy heads for La Paz in Bolivia where, in the thin air of the world's highest capital city, he will attempt to beat the world record set there by a Frenchman. Yesterday's time of 60.999sec, his fastest since his Olympic triumph, suggests he is in the shape to do it.

The hat-trick of golds for Pendleton, 26, from Bedfordshire, marks her out as the sport's supreme sprinter. She never looked threatened and claimed she would have gone for a fourth gold had the timetable not made it impossible.

She won the sprint on Saturday without needing the decider in the best-of-three races in any of the four rounds. In the final she beat China's Shuang Guo in each race by two clear bike lengths, a massive margin in a race so short.

Yesterday she won her third title as comfortably in the keirin, an event in which six sprinters follow at the increasing speed of a motorbike pacemaker for 1125 metres before a mass sprint unaccompanied for a final 375 metres.

Her most worrying moment came when the race was halted on the first lap after she was shouldered off the track by the German Christin Muche. The race restarted without Muche, disqualified for unsporting behaviour, but stopped again when the motorbike broke down.

Anxious moments but all part of this squad's training to do with stress.

"Logic not emotion. If there is one person or 80,000 in a stadium it shouldn't affect your performance," said performance director Dave Brailsford.

A replacement machine finally got them underway and Pendleton swept majestically off the final bend to take Guo at will again.

Her young team-mate Anna Blythe, riding the event for the first time, took fourth, as Craig Maclean had earlier in the men's sprint.

"Sorry but I can't believe I've done it," said Pendleton, wiping away the tears. "Three is beyond my dreams.

"It's unbelievable. I might as well retire. How can I top that?"

Shanaze Reade, one of the Magnificent Seven whose progress to the London Olympics in 2012 Sportsmail is charting, won gold with Pendleton in the team sprint.

Reade, 18, will compete only in BMX next year in Beijing, an event in which she is a favourite, but in 2012 Britain plan to use her to contest both sections of the sport.

Are you a phenomenon, she was asked? "Nah, just a novice still. But there's more to come," she said.