Track Cycling World Championships 2012: Women's team pursuit aim to earn fourth world title for Great Britain It's becoming more dynamic. At the start, we basically just lumped our three fastest individual pursuiters together, which seemed logical, and assumed that's was where the event started and finished. But we - and other teams - have rapidly learned about the need for more flexible riders; riders who can start fast and hang on, riders who have a change of pace and can make a difference with a punchy turn when they hit the front. All the teams ride much more aerodynamically now, much closer together, the bike handling skills have improved. Great Britain's change of personnel reflects all of the above. Originally the women's team pursuit was seen as the most likely vehicle for the remarkable athletic talent that is Rebecca Romero after she was denied the chance to defend her individual pursuit title in London by a change in the Olympic format which resulted in her event being dropped. Romero, in the form of her life, rode in GB's first World Championship triumph, alongside Wendy Houvenaghel and Jo Rowsell, when they produced world record of 3- 22.415 at Manchester just four months before the Olympics. Thereafter injury - and some motivational issues - kicked in and by the time she returned to the GB programme last year it was too late. The event had moved on. The multi-talented Lizzie Armitstead also fell by the wayside. A member of GB's World Championship winning team in 2009 and 2010, she looked nailed on to be a member of the Olympic team but the emergence of young riders Laura Trott and Dani King started to seriously threaten her place and once the Olympic road race route was unveiled - a course much suited to Armitstead's talents - she decided to drop out of the track programme. Paralympian Sarah Storey pursued her dream of earning a riding the Olympics but was finally cut in December. Simply getting in the women's Olympics team pursuit squad - the best part of a dozen have tried out in the last two years - was too fraught and now it is down to the starting trio of Trott, King and Jo Rowsell while the veteran Wendy Houvenaghel a three-time world gold medallist in the event, is still in the picture, although she misses a start here on Friday. "It's been really tough, and a little sad, with riders and friends gradually dropping out and disappearing out of camp over the last year or 15 months," says Trott. It feels like there are a lot of empty seats now as we sit around at training. It's up to us to make sure we finish the job.