Olympic Gold completes the set for Manning

Birmingham alumnus Paul Manning rode into the history books this morning, winning Olympic Gold in the Team Pursuit track cycling event in the velodrome in a world-record breaking time of 3:53.314.

Manning, with fellow team-mates Ed Clancy, Geraint Thomas and Bradley Wiggins, beat the Danish quartet and nearly overlapped their opponents as they approached the 4,000m finish line, smashing almost another 2 seconds off the world record that the GB cyclists had set in qualifying yesterday.

Paul Manning, a former Geology student from the University of Birmingham, will be delighted with his achievements today, especially as this Olympic gold completes his gold medal set in this discipline, adding to the two World Championship golds and two Commonwealth golds.

For Manning, aged 33, it was the Olympic gold that had eluded him and the Team Pursuit boys in the past, having achieved silver in the Athens Olympics, narrowly missing out to the Australians, and bronze at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

It was first time since the London 1908 Olympic Games that Great Britain have won the gold medal in the team pursuit. Today’s team pursuit gold also makes it Britain’s biggest overall gold medal haul at an Olympic Games since at Antwerp in 1920.