Team England cyclist Andy Tennant has admitted that winning a gold medal on the track at the Commonwealth Games was not an achievable target for the pursuit team.
No Englishmen made it through to the medal races of the individual event today, while a team led by Sir Bradley Wiggins was forced to settle for a silver medal in the team final last night.
Tennant revealed that the team had gone into the Games gunning for gold, but acknowledged that the Australians had been a class above at the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome.
"We came here to obviously try to win gold, but with the Australian team on the form that they're on, I don't think that was achievable with the work that we've done coming into this," he told Sports Mole.
"We made the best of the team that we had. Obviously having Sir Brad in the team was fantastic and that gave us loads of confidence. Without him coming back, our other rider was Jon Dibben and he broke his elbow so we wouldn't have even been in the team pursuit.
"So I think that was fantastic, and it was a great honour to ride with him. A silver medal is still an achievement for myself - it's not what you want but it sort of makes up for not riding the Olympics."
Tennant finished fifth in qualifying for the individual event earlier today, narrowly missing out on a bronze-medal race.