Cycling: Academy Sytem Bearing Fruit As Britain's Youngsters Make Impact

As this Olympic cycle reaches its tipping point, and the countdown to Beijing begins in earnest, the doubts that surfaced in Athens about the age of Great Britain's track cycling team seem to have been dispelled if the pointers from this world championship and the Commonwealth Games are anything to go by.

The youthful promise pushing through behind the established champions such as Chris Hoy and Jason Queally was summed up in a single image from yesterday's second round of the keirin, the spectacular and dangerous Japanese event in which sprinters are paced behind a motorbike before the final elbows out surge to the line: a 19-year-old, Matthew Crampton, fighting it out with the Frenchman Arnaud Tournant, one of the giants - in both senses - of world sprinting.

Alongside the former Manchester bike shop assistant, in the same heat, was the Scot Ross Edgar, all of 23-years-old. Tellingly, both men were in the selection frame for Thursday night's team sprint alongside Hoy and Queally, having ridden fast enough times in Melbourne. Indeed, at the Commonwealth Games, Crampton was actually faster for his leg than Hoy. In the long term they will push Hoy, Queally and company for places in the team sprint; for the moment, they are honing their bike-handing skills in the individual event and the keirin.

A similar process is taking place in the men's endurance events, where the academy system established 18 months ago is already bearing fruit. Yesterday, in the men's individual pursuit, an 18-year-old from Essex, Ian Stannard, was thrown in for the experience and responded with a respectable 20th place. Today the 19-year-old Welshman Geraint Thomas, fresh from his bronze medal in the points race in Melbourne, will be blooded in the team pursuit. Tomorrow, last year's sensation, the 20-year-old Manxman Mark Cavendish, will line up with the near veteran Rob Hayles to defend the madison relay title the pair won in Los Angeles.

What is more, particularly with 2012 and London in mind, other youngsters are waiting in the wings back in Britain because they are too young to compete here. Shane Sutton, the British team's head coach, speaks warmly of Jason Kenny, 17, and the victim of an extraordinary controversy at last year's junior championships in Austria, when he won the keirin title only to be disqualified in what officials later admitted was a mistaken verdict.

That championship, by far the most successful in British cycling history, may come to be seen as the turning point when the 2012 generation definitively came through, with the emergence of prospects such as Anna Blythe, a double medallist in the sprint events, and Andrew Tennant, gold medallist in the individual pursuit.

"It's a lot more rosy than people thought it was going to be," says Sutton. "The academy is producing and they are coming through more quickly than expected because we are getting the skills into them young, like when you teach a five-year-old a foreign language."

In yesterday morning's other qualifying rounds, the newly crowned Commonwealth 4,000m individual pursuit champion Paul Manning made the bronze medal ride-off after qualifying third, missing the ride-off for gold and silver by just 0.15sec. Another of England's Commonwealth champions, Victoria Pendleton, began the defence of her world sprint title in sprightly style, qualifying sixth in the morning's 200m time-trial which establishes the initial pecking order before progressing smoothly to the quarter- final stage.