Scotland's John Archibald sets sea-level individual pursuit World Record

Scotland’s John Archibald, brother of world and Olympic champion track cyclist Katie, has today set a new World Record for the fastest ever individual pursuit ridden at sea level.

Riding at the Swiss Cycling Challenge in Grenchen – if you’re scratching your head about which part of Switzerland is at sea level, the strict definition for the record is that it is set at below 500 metres in altitude – Archibald set a time of 4 minutes 10.17 seconds.

In doing so, he knocked four tenths of a second off the previous sea-level World Record held by Australia’s Jack Bobridge and which until September had stood since 2011 as the fastest time at any altitude for the four-kilometre event.

It was broken by the US former gravel biker Ashton Lambie, who set a time of 4 minutes 07.25 seconds at altitude in the Pan American Championships at Aguascalientes, Mexico.

Once considered the Blue Riband event of track cycling, the individual pursuit has perhaps lost some of its lustre since it was dropped from the Olympic programme after Beijing in 2008, where Bradley Wiggins won the gold medal.

But remarkably, the men who are now the two fastest individual pursuit riders in cycling history belong to the trade team Huub Wattbike Test Team, which Lambie joined last month for the US off-season, and it caps an astonishing year on the track for the Derby-based outfit.

In January, riding as Team KGF, it beat off national squads to win the team pursuit at the UCI Track World Cup in Belarus – and just last weekend, repeated that success as the fourth round of this year’s series took place at London’s Lee Valley Velopark.

In a nod to its habit of beating national teams – the finishing order in London is shown below – the outfit has started referring to itself in a tongue-in-cheek way as coming from the country of ‘Derbados.’

The People's Republic of Derby?

Stunning achievement from @HuubWattbike - a gold in the men’s team pursuit at the Track Cycling World Cup

Congratulations, @DanBiggles22, @JonnyDWale, @jjzarchibald & Ashton Lambie #derbados pic.twitter.com/r2TqAlk4ND

— BBC Derby Sport (@BBCDerbySport) December 16, 2018