AFTER missing out on the European Track Championships due to glandular fever, Abergavenny Road Club's Becky James returned to the international stage in fine fashion at a recent meeting in the Manchester Velodrome.

Despite being a sprinter specialising in shorter distance events, James was invited to compete in the Elite Women's endurance races which included three of the GB medalists from the recent World Cup and Brecon's Jessica Allen, still on a high after competing in the Women's World Road Race Champs in Italy as a team mate of Nicole Cooke.

James's first race was the 40 laps points race - 37 more laps than she is used to!

Despite a very fast pace, James stayed in the bunch until the last lap before showing her hand to get third in the last sprint and finish eighth overall.

Next up was the 32 lap scratch race, where the first one over the line wins.

Once again James stayed in the bunch during the race and left all the pace making and attacking to the endurance specialists.

Despite the pace being high, James was able to stay close enough to the GB women to be within about a quarter of a lap of them with just over a lap to go before unleashing her sprint to fantastic effect and win comfortably by a couple of bike lengths.

Third finisher was Alex Greenfield a multi European Junior Track Champion and fourth was USA multi track and road champion Kacey Mandfield.

Last race of the evening for James was the hybrid devil/scratch race where for the first ten laps the last rider in the field is eliminated and then the remaining riders have ten more laps to complete where first over the line wins.

This was not the type of race where riders can sit comfortably in the bunch and James had to stay at the front right on the pace from the gun.

Having survived the elimination laps, Becky was then able to stay close enough to the other riders to once again make sure that her sprint finish made the difference and win by a greater margin than her previous victory.

Second place went to Lucy Martin, a silver medalist at the recent Manchester World Cup and third was Kacey Manderfield.

Having been off the track since attending the pre-Olympic training camp in Newport, the only non-Bejing bound rider to do so, this was a fantastic return to the spotlight and augurs well for the coming twelve months which should hopefully include trips to Minsk for the European Track Championships and to Moscow for the Worlds.