“I felt quite nervous because it had been 14 months without competing. Qualifying was solid and although I let Kobayashi past me in the end, I actually feel not winning is better than winning because now I can identify and assess what I did wrong in between it. Kobayashi uses a different technique to overtake so I felt that experience and know what to expect when she’s behind me in the future,” said Lee, who considered the event as a “warm-up” for the Olympics in less than three months’ time and therefore used similar tactics and communication with coach Shen Jinkang.

“I actually think other competitors – like from Germany – have had domestic events all year but no international ones so they’re the ones who need to acclimatise. We’ve seen Japan’s improvement but for the likes of the US [team] they don’t seem as good as before. So we got an idea of the different country’s levels. Olympics aside, it also helps us for the world championships – it seems like we’ll have a lot more interactions with Japanese competitors in future as their keirin school is training a lot of girls.”

“I’m very satisfied with my performance in the sprint qualifiers. I had predicted that I’d get beaten in the round of 16, so to get into the top eight is better than I expected. Mission accomplished, I’m very happy,” To said.

“I’m very happy with my overall performance in the Nations Cup. But I definitely need to work on my explosive power as it was not as good as the international riders, so I need to work on my strength a bit more to close the gap. I started transitioning to the speed track races in 2020. My objective is to win a medal at the next big tournament, the National Games.”