The hosts were Olympic champions in the women’s event at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, but none of the winning quartet were part of the line-up today, with a development squad taking to the track as the World Cup season began.

A strong ride saw the British team advance to the gold medal ride, where they met the challenge of Italy.

The team of Manon Lloyd, Ellie Dickinson, Emily Nelson and Emily Kay, the latter of which being the eldest at 21, would benefit from the Italian team struggling in the closing stages of the event to claim gold in 4min 25.809sec.

France would triumph in the bronze medal ride by producing a time of 4:26.725 to defeat Poland.

The British men’s team were also much changed from their victorious team at the Olympic Games, with Andy Tennant, Ollie Wood, Kian Emadi and Mark Stewart contesting today’s final.

A time of 3:58.891 was enough for the British team to see off the challenge of the European champions France, who would end 0.7 seconds off the pace.

Canada would triumph in the bronze medal ride in 4:01.958, with Switzerland finishing four seconds down.

Poland’s Kamil Kuczynski achieved a surprise victory in the men’s individual sprint, after defeating the newly crowned European champion Pavel Yakushevskiy.

The Russian rider had triumphed in the opening race of the final, but Kuczynski was able to force a decider by narrowly edging Yakushevskiy in the second ride.

Kuczynski was then able to complete a comeback victory by securing a win in the third and final ride of the contest.

Ukraine’s Andrii Vynokurov prevented the host nation from celebrating another medal, as he defeated Ryan Owens of Britain in the bronze medal contest in straight rides.

Recently crowned European sprint champion Simona Krupeckaitė secured a victory in the women’s keirin event, with the 33-year-old timing her final effort to perfection.

The Lithuanian would finish ahead of Ukraine’s Liubov Basova and Australia’s Courtney Field, who were just 0.003 seconds apart in second and third place respectively.