RIK Waddon is ready to upgrade his Paralympic silver from four years ago - insisting nothing less than gold is now good enough for British cyclists.

Waddon, from Chorley admits the whole team has been inspired by the performances of Chris Hoy, Laura Trott, Bradley Wiggins and others at the Olympics earlier this month.

But he knows that repeating the 13 medals they won in Beijing won't be easy, with China in particular upping their game in the last four years.

“Bradley Wiggins lives in the next village to me. He’s got the gold postbox in Chorley. I see that and just think I’ve got to go for it,” he said.

“We produced in Beijing and so did the Olympic guys. The Olympic guys produced here and I’m sure we can as well because we’ve been carrying out the same process at our level.

"Coming out of Beijing they were looking at what they could do to change things, coaching-wise, staffing-wise, equipment. They’ve gone down to the minutest detail in doing things.”

However, he finished ninth in his opening competition at the Games, the 1km time trial. Changes to the rules meant Waddon, who has a C3 disability classification, was racing against rivals from other categories, with a time weighting applied to give an overall winner.

Waddon's class was effectively rated as scratch, while those in the C1 and C2 classifications received a time allocation of between 89% and 92%.

The 35-year old clocked 1:11.394, the third fastest time in the competition, but China's Yu Li saw his time of 1:13.009 knocked down to 1:05.021 to take gold. It was always going to be hard for me with in being a time factored event," he said.

“Our main focus is the team sprint, that's what I've poured my resources and training into.

“We know we are going well, it's going to be a real battle but the times we've been posting have been really good. We just can't control what the other teams are doing."”

China will be the key rivals for the British team, which includes Jody Cundy and Darren Kenny, but Waddon remains upbeat.

“The team sprint is an event we’ve dominated, so it's been tough to see them doing so well at it," he added.

“That’s why I was employed back into the team to concentrate on that event.

“We’ve put a lot of resources into that event to get that gold medal back and it is great seeing the results.”

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