A full team is being sent out to Apeldoorn, Holland to represent Great Britain at the European Track Championships later this week, 18 – 20 October.

Included in the teams line-up are the usual names; Dani King, Laura Trott, Joanna Rowsell, who are all on a high from breaking the Team Pursuit world record at the National Track Championships.

The star-studded women’s endurance team will be hoping they can repeat the performance alongside Scotland’s Katie Archibald and rising star Elinor Barker, who we interviewed recently.

Welcoming Katie to the team, Shane Sutton OBE, British Cycling’s Performance Manager commented;

It’s great to be able to welcome Katie Archibald to the team, and it’s testament to the programme that we are able to continue to develop and expand our squad and introduce talented new riders.

The 2013/14 track season sees the women’s team pursuit grow to four riders, and four kilometres in distance, to match the men’s event.

The European Championships will see Trott and King return to Apeldoorn, the venue where they won their first world team pursuit titles, in 2011.

Barker won world gold in Belarus in February alongside Trott and King as three-time world champion Rowsell, the eldest in the group at 24, sat out the 2012/13 track season.

For the women’s sprint squad, the team will comprise of two-time world champion Becky James, Olympian Jess Varnish, who at the national track championship dominated, winning all three of her events, and Vicky Williamson.

As we’re just at the start of the season, it’s exciting to watch the races unfold and Team GB showcase their impressive talent. As Shane Sutton stated;

It is the start of the season, so we don’t know where we are at compared to the rest of the world at this moment in time. However, we saw some strong results at the National Track Championships last week and we are looking to be in good shape as a team, so it will be interesting to see how that stands up against some international competition.

We will be reporting on who is victorious over the coming months, culminating in the season’s finale in February as the Track World Championships are hosted in Cali, Colombia.