Event: 25-29 September 2013
Location: Manchester Velodrome

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The 2013 British National Track Championships welcomes a plethora of Olympic and Paralympic champions who will be out to start their track season in style.

Running from Wednesday 25 to Sunday 29 September, the competition at the Manchester Velodrome brings together the best of Britain’s track cycling talent, from burgeoning youth through to established and decorated stars.

London Olympic champions Jason Kenny, Laura Trott, Philip Hindes, Dani King, Joanna Rowsell, Ed Clancy and Steven Burke, and Paralympic medallists Jody Cundy, Neil Fachie, Helen Scott, Aileen McGlynn and Jon-Allan Butterworth, will all feature over the five days.

In spite of the absence of double world champion Becky James, who won four titles at last year’s event, there is no shortage of talent in the field for the women’s sprint events.

Double junior world champion Dannielle Khan will be present after her coup in Glasgow, with fellow Great Britain female sprinters Jess Varnish, Victoria Williamson and Katy Marchant also in the field.

Twenty-two-year-old Varnish, who has been on the road to recovery following a back injury, missed 2012’s championships following the London Olympics and as well as the individual events will also link up with Khan for the team sprint.

“I am still focussing on man one in the team sprint since getting back from injury but I’m also focussing some attention on the sprint because they can go quite well together,” Varnish said in an interview with British Cycling.

“I want to do well in the individual sprint, that is really something that I want to do personally. I am really looking forward to that. In the competitions later in the season, that’s an area where I am really looking forward to seeing how I get on.”

Fellow sprinter Williamson, who replaced Varnish at the track world championships, took home three silver medals last year and will aspire to step up to gold this time around after performing impressively in Minsk in February, where she won bronze in the team sprint with James.

Three time Olympic champion Jason Kenny heads up the men’s sprint competitors, the keirin world champion returning to the event after a hiatus last year. In his absence 21-year-old Scot Callum Skinner was crowned sprint champion and will go all out to defend it.

“It was probably one of my best achievements last year, so to be able to hold on to that or even be close to it would be a great thing,” Skinner told British Cycling.

Kenny’s Olympic team sprint colleague Philips Hindes, along with Great Britain teammates Lewis Oliva, Kian Emadi, Matt Rotherham and Matt Crampton, make for a robust competition.

Skinner, Hindes and Rotherham will link up in the team sprint as will Kenny, Emadi and Crampton.

Olympic team pursuit champions Laura Trott, Dani King and Joanna Rowsell are joined by Wiggle Honda teammate and world champion Elinor Barker in the women’s team pursuit, which will be ridden as a four person, four-kilometre event for the first time at the British championships.

And the talented quartet could be in line to set a world record with the new format in its infancy, though 19-year-old Welshwoman Barker was coy on their chances.

“It’ll be the first time we have ridden the 16 lap race so I think it will be different and will take a bit of getting used to,” she said.

“It’ll definitely seem like a very different event I think. However, it’s still team pursuit and still very much a similar event so I’m just going to go out and enjoy riding in the rainbow stripes for the very first time.

“A world record is a possibility but we aren’t really going for as time, just looking to go and do our first ride as a team of four and see how it goes really and in doing that, set a benchmark for our next ride.”

With the men’s team pursuit competition absent of senior Great Britain athletes, there is an opportunity for the domestic line-ups of Team Sportscover, VC St Raphael, Prestige VC and Wheelbase Altura MGD to take the title.

British Cycling Olympic Development Programme riders Oliver Wood (Team Sportscover), Jacob Ragan (Wheelbase Altura), though, will take to the boards.

The inclusion of Paralympic medallists Jon-Allan Butterworth, Neil Fachie, Helen Scott, Aileen McGlynn and Jody Cundy forms part of a world class field in the para-cycling disciplines, with a time trial, pursuit and flying 200 metres to be contested.

Butterworth won three silvers in the London, while McGylnn and pilot Scott won silver and bronze. Fachie enjoyed gold in the kilo and sprint silver with Barney Storey while multiple Paralympic champion Cundy added to his palmares with pursuit bronze.

Tickets for the British National Track Championships are on sale with coverage of the event on the British Cycling site.