Rowsell ready for Olympic pressure (From Sutton Guardian)

Rowsell ready for Olympic pressure

11:34am Friday 20th April 2012 in Sport By Sophia Sleigh, Reporter

Joanna Rowsell is prepared to deal with the expectations of a nation at this summer’s Olympic Games.

The 23-year-old Cheam cyclist teamed up with Laura Trott and Dani King to win the women’s team pursuit at the World Track Cycling Championships in Melbourne earlier this month to make them firm favourites for the Games.

Although the team is yet to be officially announced, it is unlikely the three, who also won at the World Cup in London earlier this year, will be split up and Rowsell knows anything less than gold in a sport GB normally dominate, could be considered a failure.

“We are the favourites now so that’s quite a lot of pressure,” she said.

“We’ve got our work cut out ahead of us – everyone in the world is catching up with us.”

The team twice broke the world record at the Championships, once in semi-final and once in the final against Australia, who themselves had set a new record in their semi-final.

“It was our last competition before the Olympic games,” added Rowsell, who trains in the roads around Box Hill and Epsom Downs.

“It’s quite tiring adjusting to the time zone, that’s why we went out early.

“We had to keep our cool and not freak out and we got our record back straight away.

“We were really pleased we broke the record again especially as we had a qualifier and a final a couple of hours apart – in the Olympics it will be over two days.”