Josie Knight battles through 'biggest challenge' in unfamiliar conditions at European Championships

Josie Knight battled through the ‘biggest challenge’ she’d ever faced and wanting to fly home from Munich to secure a valiant fourth-place finish at the multi-sport European Championships.

The 25-year-old narrowly missed out on a medal in Saturday’s individual pursuit bronze showdown as she went down to Italian Vittoria Guazzini by 2.71s.

Knight clocked a personal best time of 3:25.231 to qualify fourth in the morning but was unable to emulate those exploits later in the day on Munich’s makeshift 200m track.

Several British riders have struggled to adapt to the shortened distance after travelling straight out from the Commonwealth Games event held at London’s more conventional Lee Valley VeloPark.

Knight says encountering the unfamiliar conditions was a massive shock to the system but took significant pride from overcoming her initial German demons.

The Olympic silver medallist, who also finished fourth in the team pursuit event on Friday, said: “It’s been a particular challenge for us as we had the Commonwealth Games and had not ridden together at all.

“Most of the teams – the Italians, French and Germans – had 200m tracks that they could ride on. I’d never ridden on one before – so if someone had offered me a plane ticket home on the first day I would have taken it.

“I couldn’t ride – my strength is my line and my smoothness and it had just gone out of the window.

“It was the biggest challenge I’ve ever faced learning how to ride it – but we pulled together on raceday and it’s definitely got better.

“I didn’t quite have it today – it’s always disappointing to come fourth, but it’s a really, really strong field here today so I can be pretty pleased.

“I was pretty mentally knackered after that so I was just really happy