Wendy Houvenaghel bounced back from her defeat in the individual pursuit final to win team gold with Joanna Rowsell and Lizzie Armitstead at the Track Cycling World Championships.

The trio clinched Britain's first title of the championships last night as they stepped up the pace in the final kilometre of the 3,000metre event to beat New Zealand by more than a second in 3min 22.720sec.

It was a sweet victory for Houvenaghel, who 24 hours earlier had to settle for silver despite qualifying fastest for the individual final.

"This has really made up for the disappointment of last night," she said. "I was confident we'd do really well - I was anticipating the win and it's good to have done that."

Victoria Pendleton and Shanaze Reade finished second in the women's team sprint as they took Britain's medal tally in Pruszkow, Poland to six in two days.

Pendleton (above) and Reade - the two-time defending champions having won in Majorca and Manchester - were beaten into silver by Australia.

Last night also saw road racing's quickest sprinter, Mark Cavendish, return to the track.

However, the 23-year-old was a victim of his own burgeoning reputation as he finished seventh in the men's scratch race.

Seven months after storming out of the Laoshan Velodrome as the only member of Britain's track squad at the Olympics without a medal and vowing his track days were "finished", Cavendish was a marked man throughout the 60lap race as France's Morgan Kneisky claimed gold.

The Isle of Man rider said: "I knew coming in here that it was going to be hard to do anything, I was being watched."