By james art Charlton, who is from Sherburne Village, was part of the pursuit team for the British team that finished second at the worlds, narrowly losing out to hosts Denmark in the final. Having partnered Charlie Tanfield, Ollie Wood and Ethan Hayter, the 21-year-old was delighted to walk away from his first Senior Worlds with a medal.
However, this was only the beginning. Returning to the track the following day for the qualifying round of the 4km individual pursuit, Charlton, who rides for Hetton Hawks, clocked a time of 3:59.304, bettering the previous world record set by Italy’s Filippo Gana when he won gold at the World Championships two years earlier.
It was a stunning achievement for Dynamo Durham, who shook his head in disbelief as the score flashed on the giant scoreboard before celebrating with his national team coach Ben Greenwood.
“Not bad,” said Charlton, a former national under-23 time trial champion, in the immediate aftermath of his world record ride. “It hasn’t really sunk in yet and I think it’s going to be a while before it does.
“For the last nine months, I’ve been training terribly. For the past month I have had the best legs of my life.
“I was very bad in March, April. I gave myself chronic fatigue and it was really hard to come back from it. Since then, it’s been a really slow, methodical process.
“Over the last month, I just feel like I’ve been getting stronger in my training, in my numbers, and it’s worked out really well when I needed to.”
Nevertheless, Charlton, a former pupil at Durham’s Belmont Comprehensive School, admitted it would still be a huge surprise to lower the world record, not least because the Danish track wasn’t really supposed to favor ultra-fast times.
“The conditions, like air pressure and temperature, are average,” Charlton said after his qualifying session, which shaved an incredible 11 seconds off his personal best. “The track itself is quite slow and quite difficult to ride because there are really long straights and tight inclines.
“On a velodrome, the straights are where you slow down and the turns are where you make up for that speed. It’s not built for speed on this track.”
Charlton’s ride took him to the final in Ballerup, where he faced Italy’s Jonathan Millan.
Milan always had the upper hand in the gold medal race, building an advantage of more than a second over the first three kilometers.
Charlton began to pull away in the final kilometer of the race, but Milan crossed the finish line in a time of 3:59.153, taking away Charlton’s world record and depriving him of a gold medal.
However, the north-easterner was able to reflect on the hugely successful championships that heralded his arrival on the senior world stage with a bang.
Charlton is set to be a key figure in British track cycling as the team heads into the new Olympic cycle ahead of the 2028 games in Los Angeles – even if he is no longer the world record holder.
“It was only about six hours, but that’s longer than most people have a world record,” Charlton said. “Most people don’t have one at all.”