Nicole Cooke, winner of this year’s women’s Tour de France, may be absent because of injury, but Great Britain can call on a growing pool of talent at the final World Road Championships this week before next summer’s Olympic Games.

While Bradley Wiggins and David Millar cross swords in tomorrow’s elite time-trial in the suburbs of Stuttgart, the main focus of today’s opening session of racing will be the performances of Wendy Houvena-ghel, the British time-trial champion, and the fast-rising Emma Pooley in the 25-kilometre women’s time-trial.

Pooley’s first appearance in the World Championships, in Madrid in 2005, was a huge disappointment and it has taken her 18 months to reclaim her place in the Britain team. Now the Cambridge graduate hopes that her form will secure her place for Beijing.

Pooley, who finished third to Cooke in the women’s Tour de France, is one of several young Britons who have made their mark this season. The former triathlete is painfully modest when it comes to her abilities, but the hilly roads around Stuttgart are well-suited to a cyclist who has already impressed her rivals in the mammoth climbs of the Pyrenees. “It’s a good course for somebody like me,” Pooley, who will also compete in the women’s road race, said, “but to say that I am secretly harbouring medal hopes would be overstating it.”

Millar, the British road and time-trial champion, who is soon to embark on a new venture as leader and co-owner of the Slipstream team, is hoping that a medal-winning performance will bring a happy climax to a difficult year.

Millar endured a traumatic Tour de France, even breaking down in tears as he watched doping scandal follow doping scandal, but redeemed his season with national titles on the road and against the clock.

Despite missing the Tour of Spain, his normal preparation race for the World Championships, Millar is confident. “I think I’ll be pretty good in the time-trial,” he said, “but the road race course is really hard, with five thousand metres of climbing.”

Wiggins, his national teammate, will be one of Millar’s closest rivals in the elite men’s time-trial, the Londoner having emerged from the gloom that surrounded his sponsor’s mid-race withdrawal from the Tour de France after Cristian Moreni, his teammate, tested positive for drugs. Wiggins, rumoured to be moving to T-Mobile next year, will be determined to redeem a season that has veered between triumph and disaster.

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