Aberdeenshire cyclist Neah Evans hopes a frustrating experience at the World Championships in Berlin will prove beneficial in her Olympics aspirations.
The 29-year-old from Cuminestown was involved in a heavy crash while competing in the madison on Saturday.
Evans failed to clock an upcoming American changeover and got herself stuck between Jennifer Valente and Megan Jastrab to cause the crash which sent her hurtling into the boards with 22 laps to go.
Though the Scot got back on her bike, she and Barker could not pick up any further points and finished sixth as the Dutch pair of Kirsten Wild and Amy Pieters retained their title.
“The crash was partly my fault,” Evans said.
“There was a change but I didn’t see it until the last minute.
“By then I’d committed to coming over with a lot of speed and I hoped to be able to push them off a little bit but the madison is absolute mayhem.
“In the long run it will be beneficial for us. There’s a lot to reflect on and one thing we do well is analyse.
“Come the Olympics, hopefully it will be a very different story for us.”
Barker also felt the race was valuable in their preparation for the Tokyo Olympics.
She said: “We weren’t prepared for this kind of race.
“The races from the last two years have been almost exclusively won by sprints and having that top end speed and we were not expecting it to be so splintered, so that was interesting.”
Asked if this result will impact the selection, Barker said: “I don’t know. There is nothing else to select from going forward.
“It’s not team pursuit. There are no graphs. No specific power data to go off.
“There is nothing to say someone else would have done any differently in any given situation. I have absolutely no idea.”
Earlier in the championships, Evans was part of Great Britain’s women’s pursuit team which claimed silver.
She helped the team post the second fastest time in qualifying along with Ellie Dickinson, Katie Archibald and Barker before being replaced by Laura Kenny in the first round against Canada.
They defeated their opponents in a time of 4:12.389 to set up a gold medal ride-off against USA.
With Evans back in the line-up replacing Kenny, the team completed the race in a time of 4:13.129 but the USA were victorious in a time of 4:11.235.
