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Ankundinoff named in Cycling Track Olympic squad

vivodigital

Journalist

NSWIS rising star Ashlee Ankundinoff has been named in a Cycling Track Olympic 16-squad Team that is bursting with gold medal potential.

Australia qualified the full quota of track cyclists for Rio and will be in the hunt in each of the six sprint and four endurance events at the 2016 Games.

Ankundinoff has been named in the Team Pursuit where she will feature alongside 2012 London Olympian Annette Edmondson, Melissa Hoskins and Amy Cure, whom she won gold with at the 2015 World Championships.

While the majority of Australia’s Olympic track cycling gold medals have come from the sprint disciplines, Edmondson believes that with quality athletes like Akundinoff in the team pursuit team they have potential to go right to the top of the podium in Rio.

“The goal is to go out there and win the gold in Rio and we won’t be satisfied with anything less,” said Edmondson.

“We tried out some new processes going into the 2016 Worlds which didn’t work out but we know what we did in 2015 and we’ve gone back to that.

“We know each other back to front and know if we all time our form to peak on the same day then we will be smoking.”

The team recently took their training to Rockhampton in the build up to Rio.

“The training block was perfect. The weather was amazing which gave us the chance to get a lot of work in on the outdoor velodrome.

“We are now looking forward to heading back indoors and seeing the benefit of that.”

Australia won a gold, a silver and three bronze at the London 2012 Games with the most successful Olympic outing being the Athens 2004 Games where Australia won five gold medals.

Track cycling will run from Day 6-11 (August 11-16 local time) in Barra Olympic Park with medals to be decided on each day of competition.

Track Sprint

Anna Meares – Sprint, Team Sprint, Keirin

Stephanie Morton – Sprint, Team Sprint, Keirin

Patrick Constable – Team Sprint, Keirin

Matthew Glaetzer – Sprint, Team Sprint, Keirin

Nathan Hart – Team Sprint

Track Endurance

Ashlee Ankudinoff – Team Pursuit

Georgia Baker – Team Pursuit

Amy Cure – Team Pursuit

Annette Edmondson – Team Pursuit, Omnium