Aussie cyclist Bobridge on track for Rio despite worlds loss

Jack Bobridge may have missed out on a second individual pursuit world title but the 25-year-old Australian insists he's on track for his main goal, the Rio Olympics.
Bobridge went out too fast in the 4km individual pursuit final and despite having a three second lead after the first kilometre, he was hunted down and passed by Swiss Stefan Kueng in the final lap of the 4km race.
And having had to settle for a bronze with the team pursuit squad on Thursday, Bobridge admitted it hadn't been a perfect couple of months, particularly given he missed out on his world hour record attempt two weeks before championships in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, near Paris.
"You're always disappointed aren't you if you run second by two or three (tenths of a second) or whatever it was (0.269).
"I'm happy if you look overall at what I've done since January, I've had some pretty big races already, intense.
"I don't think I've fully recovered from my hour record attempt yet. I can go deeper, there's a little barrier that my body's still scared of after the hour.
"I haven't done a track worlds since 2012 in Melbourne so to come here, we had a little bit of a problem in the team pursuit which was unlucky, but to come second in the individual, I'm still on the podium and still happy."
After five years of mixing road and track cycling, Bobridge is now concentrating fully on the Olympics.
He wants to be a part of the Australian team that will be looking for revenge after losing out to Britain in London.
"I've moved back to Australia now to pursue the track 100 percent for Rio, so this is the start of a Rio campaign for me," he said.
"If you look at it, it's two medals already so I can't complain.
"It shows that my transition back in a short amount of time is on track -- we still have a year and a half til Rio so I'm not panicking."
But the world individual pursuit record holder admitted he had gone out too fast in the final after comfortably topping the qualification standings .
"For sure, 1min 05.9sec (for the first km) in the pursuit, it's faster than some kilos in the omnium.
"But this is how I always race, I'm not one to sit there and ride tempo. I come out and give it 100 percent every time. Sometimes it works and sometimes it fails.
"He (Kueng) rode a perfect race; he was calm and collected the whole way. I only lost it in the last half lap.
"I take my hat off to him, it was a fantastic ride. He's run second multiple times, so he's finally got one and congratulations to him for sure."
Source: AFP