Gold medals should never be taken for granted, but Great Britain’s cyclists are expected to dominate the 2008 Track World Championships, which begin at the Manchester velodrome this afternoon.

Since the Athens Olympic Games in 2004, Team GB have established themselves as the leading nation in track racing. With the Beijing Olympics only four months away, and with a partisan home crowd behind them, their wealth of talent promises unprecedented success over the next five days.

In most of the disciplines Britain have a medal contender and in seven events the team are defending a world title. In Majorca last spring, as Team GB won 11 medals in the 2007 World Championships, their rivals were flummoxed.

Even so, many are in Manchester hoping to reverse the trend of British domination in the last meaningful confrontation before the Beijing Games. But if home advantage was not enough, Team GB can also rely on the experience and talent of riders such as Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins and Victoria Pendleton, as well as the rapid progression of a clutch of younger challengers.

It says much for the coaching and management skills of David Brailsford, the Team GB performance director, that there has been so much success in track racing in Britain. The foundation for this was laid by Jason Queally’s gold medal in the 2000 Sydney Olympics and then consolidated, four years later in Athens, by Hoy and Wiggins.

But Brailsford’s strongest suit lies in his ability to unearth and mentor new talent. The fresh-faced Pendleton, in particular, is unrecognisable from the frail and uncertain athlete who froze with nerves on her Olympic debut in 2004. The 27-year-old from Bedfordshire, who is a multiple world champion, has transformed herself into Team GB’s golden girl, even daringly posing naked on her bike for the cover of one British magazine.

Pendleton is not the only woman likely to shine this week. Shanaze Reade and Rebecca Romero are talked of as potential Olympic medal-winners after a short but intense education in track racing. Reade, a world champion in BMX racing, paired up with Pendleton to win a gold medal in the women’s team sprint in the World Championships last year, despite having raced on the track for only two months.

Yet it is Romero who best epitomises Team GB’s alchemic qualities. A silver medal-winner in rowing at the Athens Olympics, she has made a remarkably seamless transition to track cycling, taking less than two seasons to win another silver medal, this time in last year’s World Championships. Then, in February, Romero, 28, beat Sarah Hammer, the world pursuit champion from the United States, in the Copenhagen round of the World Cup series.

Reade will compete in today’s 500-metre time-trial and in tomorrow’s women’s team sprint, while Romero tackles tomorrow’s individual pursuit and Friday’s women’s team pursuit, a discipline making its debut in the World Championships. Like Pendleton, both women are feared by their rivals. They have quickly become the riders to beat, athletes motivated solely by the thought of world titles and Olympic gold medals.

They are not alone in that respect. Hoy’s conversion from disillusioned kilometre time-trial champion — the Scot will be unable to defend his Olympic “kilo” title after the event was surprisingly dropped from the Beijing programme to make way for new events — to world-beating keirin rider has been remarkable. “The loss of the kilo from the Olympic Games was frustrating,” Hoy said. “I do miss it, but unfortunately, with it not being in the Olympic programme, I have to focus on events that are.”

Demonstrating the pragmatism that characterises Brailsford and his athletes, Hoy changed tack. He is concentrating on three track events — the keirin, individual sprint and team sprint — that offer him the prospect of world titles and Olympic gold medals. “The World Championships are a significant stepping stone, but Beijing is always going to be the big one,” he said. “I expect to be in the form of my life for Beijing, although in Manchester I won’t be far off it.”

Hoy, a world, Commonwealth and Olympic title-holder, is a reliable performer, even down to his traditional pre-championships crash. The 32-year-old’s rear tyre exploded while training at the Manchester velodrome last week, although he was not seriously hurt. Such spills are usually a good omen. Hoy also crashed in the athletes’ village in 2004, but went on to win Olympic gold.

Yet the threat of this year’s World Championships becoming a Brit-fest will be tempered by the presence of other Beijing hopefuls, who, like Team GB, are fine-tuning their squads before August’s all-important showdown. The presence of past world champions such as Ryan Bailey, of Australia, Theo Bos, of the Netherlands, Hammer, Juan Llaneras, of Spain, and Arnaud Tournant, of France, will ensure that the medals are spread around.

In the team pursuit, Britain will face strong opposition from Australia, the Netherlands and France, even if, according to Wiggins, the host nation’s four-man squad are racing “as fast as I have ever seen them”. Wiggins, one of the team who took the world title in Majorca, said: “I think we’ll be faster than we were at the worlds last year. If ever there is an occasion to do it, it’s here.”

With the days ticking by until his athletes board their flight to Beijing, Brailsford will surely agree.

Five races in which home riders should thrive

Today: Men’s 4,000-metre individual pursuit Bradley Wiggins, right, has suffered illness and the death of his father in the build-up to these World Championships, but the world and Olympic champion remains the outstanding track pursuit rider of his generation.

Tomorrow: Men’s team pursuit Is any other track discipline so spectacular? Great Britain’s four pursuit riders, led by Wiggins, need to assert themselves over their rivals, particularly the Australia team, if they are to make themselves the nation to beat in Beijing.

Friday: Men’s sprint Power and controlled aggression in an explosive effort that will take riders such as Chris Hoy from 0-60 (kilometres per hour, that is) in less than ten seconds. Hoy has high hopes for gold, but Theo Bos, the defending world champion from the Netherlands, will make him work hard for success.

Saturday: Women’s sprint Backed by Anna Blyth and Jessica Varnish, the teenagers, Victoria Pendleton will set out to try to retain her world title against strong opposition, including Natalia Tsylinskaya, of Belarus.

Sunday: Women’s keirin Pendleton will again be looking to retain her world title, with Blyth and Varnish in supporting roles, against Shuang Guo, of China, her nearest World Championship rival a year ago.

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