In the end, it wasn’t quite a perfect ten. In the final race of the Track World Championships, Victoria Pendleton narrowly failed to win gold for Great Britain when an uncharacteristic tactical error in the keirin prevented her from taking a third world title for the second successive year.

Team GB happily settled for nine gold medals in 18 events at Manchester Velodrome and David Brailsford, the performance director, increasingly concerned by the weight of pre-Olympic expectations on his rider, may have been quietly relieved. Pendleton is a fearsome sprinter, but in the next four months there is a little more tactical finesse to acquire.

Pendleton’s silver medal was hardly a catastrophe, but given her form and the euphoric atmosphere, she was disappointed. Momentarily tearful, she recovered her composure after her usual turn of pace was swept aside by Jennie Reed, of the United States.

“I was trying to figure out the best place to be, but had a wobble and Jennie was too strong,” she said. “I like to win from the front. I don’t want to bump and barge and put myself, or my rivals, in danger.” Nonetheless, nine gold and two silver medals, shared between veterans such as Chris Hoy and relative novices such as Rebecca Romero, emphasised the strength in depth of the squad. Britain are superior to their rivals in every respect: physically, mentally, technologically.

“They are like Ferrari,” Peter Pieters, the coach of the Dutch team, said. “They are on a different level.” On Saturday, Pendleton, Hoy and Wiggins won world titles respectively in the women’s sprint, the keirin and the madison, in which Mark Cavendish partnered the Londoner. “That one was for my dad who died a couple of months ago,” Wiggins said in tribute to his father, Gary, also a track rider. “The madison was his event but he never managed to win a world title, so that one’s for him.

“I set out to win three titles but never really thought it was possible. The madison is such a lottery. It’s a huge relief to get it done and come away with the gold. Hopefully, we’ll be in even better form in Beijing.”

Cavendish, 22, one of the most successful British sprinters in road cycling, described his partnership with Wiggins as “a perfect combination”. “We were a heavily marked team because we were in Manchester and because we’re good,” he said. “We had to wait for everyone else to be on their knees before going for it.”

Hoy’s keirin win finally laid the ghost of the kilometre time-trial event, which has been dropped from the Beijing Olympic programme, thus depriving him of the chance to defend the title he won in Athens four years ago. “If you’re reactive rather than proactive, you’re never going to win,” Hoy said. “When I focus on something, I give it the best of my abilities. We’re committed and, in sprinting, when you go, you have to go. You have to have confidence in yourself.”

Hoy, who will travel to Beijing, as world champion in the men’s sprint and keirin, dismissed the suggestion that Team GB’s gold-medal tally would make the squad complacent. “We’ve never been a team that rests on its laurels because if you do, you’re vulnerable,” he said. “We’re 100 per cent focused on Beijing because that’s the big one. The whole team has more to give. That’s the great thing. Little tweaks here and there, new equipment we’re bringing in — there are little things that make a difference and we’ve been deliberately holding back.”

In the decade since the British Cycling Federation faced insolvency and Manchester Velodrome was threatened with closure, Team GB’s fortunes have been transformed. Ten years ago, the promise of Pendleton, Romero and Shanaze Reade would have come to nothing. Now they are feared multiple world champions and household names.

Brailsford, lottery funding and the visionary thinking of Peter Keen, of UK Sport, take much of the credit for this revolution, but so, too, does the choice of coaching staff and the enlightened management of British Cycling. But, as Hoy emphasises, their programme is all about Olympic gold. Now this elite group must put its latest resounding success behind it and turn its thoughts to China.