Durham Dynamo sets record - but denied gold

County Durham cyclist Josh Charlton set a new world record at the track cycling world championships in Denmark this week.

But then Charlton, who is nicknamed the Durham Dynamo, lost his record, and gold, to Italy’s Jonathan Milan in the final in Ballerup later in the day.

The 21-year-old from Sherburn Village, near Durham city, who rides with Hetton Hawks, beat the record for the men’s dour kilometre individual pursuit during qualifying on Friday and he was only the third man to break the four minute mark.

Charlton finished in a time of three minutes 59.304 seconds, beating the previous world best of 3:59.636, which was set by Filippo Ganna at the world championships two years when the Italian won his sixth gold medal in the four kilometre event.

Charlton, the former under-23 national time trial champion, said: “It’s not bad is it? It’s just a total shock really. It’s an individual pursuit so you’ve got to give it full gas in the qualis. You don’t know what everyone else is going to do.

“It’s unbelievable. It’s not actually sunk in yet, and I think it will be a little while before it does.

“In the last nine months I’ve been training terribly. This last month I’ve had the best legs of my life. I got pretty badly ill in March, April time, I gave myself chronic fatigue and that was really tough to come back from. It’s been a really slow, methodical process every since then.

“This last month, it just feels like I’ve gone from strength to strength in my training, in my numbers and it’s gone really well when it needed to.

“The conditions, like the air pressure and the temperature are bang-average. The track itself is pretty slow and pretty tricky to ride because it’s got really long straights and tight bankings, and on a velodrome the straights are where you slow down, and the turns are where you make up that speed. It’s not built for speed that track.”

In the final Italian rider Milan, who had carded a personal best of 4:00.296 to qualify for the last race, took gold, leaving Charlton with two silvers from his debut championships.

The former pupil of Belmont Comprehensive School in Durham, had already clinched a silver medal from the men’s team pursuit when Britain finished second to Denmark on Thursday. 

Although Milan was always in command in the final, after going more than a second ahead of Charlton for the first three kilometres, the Brit pushed hard on the final quarter and slowly closed the gap, forcing Milan work to power through to break the world record set and take the title. 

British team-mate Daniel Bigham beat another fellow Brit Charlie Tanfield in the bronze medal race before announcing his retirement.

Earlier in the day Emma Finucane defended her individual sprint title in straight wins; becoming the first British woman to do so since Victoria Pendleton in 2010.

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