Josh Charlton wins individual pursuit gold at European Track Championships

Great Britain’s Josh Charlton won his country’s first gold medal of this year’s European Track Championships, dominating the individual pursuit on Friday evening.

The 22-year-old led his final against Portugal’s Ivo Oliveira from the start, pushing his advantage out to more than a second in the closing laps and ultimately winning by 0.749 seconds. The Brit’s time across the line was 4:02.882 over the 4,000m.

Charlton’s success on his senior European Championships debut builds on the silver medal he won in the individual pursuit at the UCI Track World Championships last October, where he also broke the world record.

Speaking to Cycling Weekly at the time, he said he was in “total shock” on becoming only the third person in the world to clock under four minutes in the event, beating Filippo Ganna’s previous benchmark with a 3:59.304 in qualifying.

Charlton was later beaten in the World Championships final by Italy’s Jonathan Milan, who also broke the world record, meaning the Brit’s time stood for around six hours. "It's more than most people have a world record for. Most people don't have one at all," he smiled.

On Friday night, Great Britain’s Maddie Leech and Rhian Edmunds also came agonisingly close to gold medals on their senior Euros debuts.

Leech led the omnium by 10 points going into the final sprint, and only needed to score one more to secure the overall. Dramatically, though, she was involved in a crash with two laps to go, and was unable to contest the dash, won by the Netherlands’ Lorena Wiebes, who took the title, leaving Leech with silver.

Edmunds, too, won silver in her individual sprint final against Yana Burlakova. The contest came down to a photofinish in the decider, with the victory going to the latter by less than a tyre’s width.

So far at the championships, held inside Belgium’s Heusden-Zolder velodrome, Great Britain have won nine medals – the most of any nation – with two days still to go.

Edmunds individual sprint silver doubled her haul, after she won the same accolade in the women’s team sprint, alongside Rhianna Parris-Smith and Lauren Bell, on Wednesday.

The men’s team pursuit squad – Charlton, Rhys Britton, Michael Gill, Noah Hobbs and Will Tidball – also won silver at the championships, beaten by the world champions Denmark in the final.

Tidball and Gill have likewise won a bronze medal apiece, in the scratch race and individual pursuit respectively. There were also bronze medals awarded to the men’s team sprint squad of Harry Ledingham-Horn, Hayden Norris and Harry Radford, and the women’s team pursuit squad of Leech, Grace Lister, Sophie Lewis, Neah Evans and Anna Morris.

The European Track Championships will continue on Saturday evening, before coming to a close on Sunday afternoon.