Olympic track cycling team named

Cycling Canada named its seven athlete track cycling team to contest six events at the London Olympic Games. Watson Lake, Yukon’s Zach Bell returns for his second Games, while two-time omnium world champion Tara Whitten attends her first Olympiad.

The women’s team pursuit squad, which took bronze at the World Championships this year and broke the Canadian record twice on its way to silver at the London World Cup event, will return to the London Velodrome nicknamed “The Pringle”. Whitten will be joined by Gillian Carleton (Victoria, BC) and Jasmin Glaesser (Coquitlam, BC), with Vancouver’s Laura Brown, who was on the gold-winning team pursuit squad at the 2011 Guadalajara Pan-American Games, attending as an alternate.

Joseph Veloce (Fonthill, ON) graduated from McMaster University with a degree in electrical engineering today, having more reason to celebrate upon learning that he’ll be racing in the men’s keirin.

In the women’s keirin and sprint events Monique Sullivan of Calgary will be hoping to replicate the two golds she won at this spring’s Pan Am Championships.

Like Sullivan, Whitten will be a two-event athlete. Along with the team pursuit, she’ll be in action in the omnium, a sextathlon of track cycling events. This season, Edmonton’s Whitten took silver in the Cali, Colombia World Cup event and fourth at the World Championships in Melbourne, Australia. She was also fourth in the World Cup final standings.

In Beijing, Zach Bell placed seventh in the points race and 12th in the madison, neither of which is an Olympic event in London. However, since 2008 he’s taken silver in the omnium at the 2009 World Championships and won the 2011 World Cup in the event.

The London Olympic track cycling events run from August 2nd to August 7th.