Laura Trott: the nerve-wracking day I won gold in the women's team pursuit We had wanted to start our Olympic campaign - which is how we looked on the World Cup - by doing something a bit special in qualifying and making a statement but it had not gone well at all. We had 24 hours to stew on it until the final the next night which is when we showed our strength as a group. Dani King came in for Wendy and we talked through how Joanna had to go off slower: we simply could not let the excitement and the adrenalin of the crowd get to us. Second time around we got it right - we beat the Canadians in 3mins 18.148 seconds, which was our first world record together as a trio. That ride restored our confidence and we started to really train well in the lead up to the World Championships in Melbourne and it was that trip down to Australia which was probably the key to the entire Olympic success. We knew the Australians would have their strongest trio out and that they would be targeting their home World Championships. We also knew pretty much for certain that in qualifying they would break our world record from London. Our immediate response had to be breaking the world record straight back. There was no way we could let Australia have the upper hand at any stage this year. It felt like a real showdown. In the morning qualifying Anette Edmondson, Melissa Hoskins and Josephine Tomic came straight out for Australia with a new world record time over a second quicker than we had ridden in London. The home crowd was going wild but this was something we had been waiting and talking about for months. In our campaign to win the Olympic gold medal, this was the most important moment of all. We were in great shape. In fact, my best form of the year was right there in Melbourne. Everything seemed pretty effortless - but we had to be careful how we went about things if we were going to reply with an even quicker ride. In London it had been the excitement of being in front of a home crowd that had seen us go out too quick; now we had to make sure that our desire to take the world record straight back off the Australia was not our undoing. We kept it pretty steady - so much so that we were still just down on the Australian time after eight laps. But we knew, and they knew, that we were building an unstoppable momentum and we finished really strongly in 3mins 16.850 sec. The world record was ours again and it was a big moment psychologically. For a few minutes there the Australian girls must have thought the door was opening; then we slammed it shut again. We went even quicker in the final in Melbourne that night to take another second off that world record, just because we were feeling good and racing well rather than because we deliberately went out there to go even quicker. At no stage did we set out to break the world record at the Olympics either. The simple fact was that we were in great form and world-record pace was the pace we trained and raced at this year. Every time we went to the track we went just a little bit quicker. There was a bit of stress at London after we had qualified with another world record. On the Saturday morning, Joanna woke up feeling unwell. At least that is what we thought at the time. Now we think it was just a huge attack of nerves. Anyway she was not feeling good and it was a bit of a dilemma. To a certain extent we are interchangeable in the team and we could have brought Wendy in and changed the riding order around but to my mind Joanna is always the big constant in our squad. She has been there from the start and she is always part of our best performances. If anybody is irreplaceable it is her and as a trio we had been going so well you are loathe to change anything. Anyway it was out of our hands. It was the coaches" decision and eventually they said Joanna would start so we shifted the workload and I took a bit of the strain by doing three 1½-laps turns. I was pretty nervous to be honest - what if it did not work out and we blew apart as a team? - but we all worked well together and another world record came our way. Joanna felt much better by the end of the race. Later that day she was flying again and we reeled off our sixth world record of the year to take the gold medal. A perfect end to a perfect year.