The quartet of Bradley Wiggins, Chris Newton, Bryan Steel and Paul Manning set a very stiff pace during the opening stages of their bronze medal ride-off with France.

And they maintained that effort to pick up the bronze as they beat France by four seconds in a new British record of 4min 01.979 secs for the 4km distance.

Manning, 25, from Mossley said the gold medal-winning performance of Jason Queally had inspired the whole team.

"I was speechless when Jason won the gold on the opening night and Rob (Hayles) qualified second fastest in the individual pursuit, and it has been a real rollercoaster since really," said Manning.

"Expectations have gone that little higher each night into it, so it was fantastic that we were able to carry on that success."

Manning and Wiggins were involved in both of Britain's races on Tuesday, while Newton and Steel returned in place of Hayles and Jonny Clay for the third place ride-off.

Freshness

"We were disappointed to lose in the semi-final, and in the back of your mind you are thinking `I have just raced hard and done 4:02 and I've got to do it all again,"' Manning added.

"But the freshness of Chris and Bryan helped us keep the speed high and it was just seamless really. When I saw we had broken the national record again, it was easy to re-focus on the job in hand."

Bryan Steel explained that the decision to change the team had paid dividends.

"We ran a different team for the semi-final which was a gamble, but we broke the national record by two seconds there," said Steel.

"We broke the national record again and were a second off the world record so we can't have asked for anything better this week."

Paid tribute

And Steel paid tribute to the efforts of everyone involved with the British cycling team.

"There's four of us on the track but there's probably 10 behind us who have done just as much."

Earlier Britain had been beaten by Ukraine in the semi-final despite producing what, at the time, was a British record.

The Ukrainians clocked 4:00.720 for the 4000m, breaking the old world record of 4:00.958 set by Italy on 31 August 1996.

But that was a mark that was to last just over an hour as Germany became the first team ever to break the four-minute mark for the 4km event.

The World champions clocked 3:59.710 seconds to beat Ukraine who could only clock 4:04.520.

Jens Lehmann, Daniel Becke, Guido Fulst with, individual pursuit gold-medallist Robert Bartko had ousted France in the semi-finals, leaving the 1996 Olympic champions to face Britain in the third-place ride-off.