KATIE Archibald and Kirsten Wild of the Netherlands were employed by the same team on the cycling tour this season and last night in Glasgow they discovered they had another thing in common. Both now know what it feels like to come a close second to the other in a European Championships omnium.

Having finished on the right side of a one-two in this event on the last two editions of this continental showpiece, including on Wild’s home terrain of Apeldoorn 12 months ago, yesterday it was the Dutchwoman’s time to reign and the Scot’s turn to settle for silver in front of her home fans. As much as she chided herself for not quite having the legs to get it done, that still meant the 24-year-old from Milngavie has a hat-trick of new bling from Glasgow 2018 to speak of – one gold and two silver. She and Laura Kenny, the reigning Olympic omnium champion, have a pretty decent chance of adding to that haul when they form a star-studded Madison team today.

Considering the large field assembled and the multitude of different components, it is remarkable that most could pretty much call this as a two-horse race beforehand. Wild went into the event as reigning world champion, but that was a competition which the 24-year-old from Milngavie didn’t take part in. Not only had Archibald bested her Dutch rival and team-mate for the two previous two European titles, she got the better of a world championship one-two in this event in 2016.

Perhaps that helped calm the nerves when Wild made a flying start to the competition, taking maximum points from both the scratch race, then finishing fourth to Archibald’s fifth behind Russia’ Evgenia Augustinas in the tempo race. It wasn’t until the Scot, whose recent bad luck has involved a broken collarbone, rib and back injuries, led out the sprint and held the Dutchwoman at bay – her face more of a smile than a grimace - to claim the elimination race that the crowd sensed this was on. From 40-38 and 74-70 suddenly it was 112-110, but with Wild taking an early lead then mainly grimly marking her – even when they both gained 20 points for a lap on the rest of the field - such hope was illusory. The final scores on the doors were 155 to 144, with Italia’s Laetizia Paternoster taking bronze with 111.

“There wasn’t much I could do,” said Archibald. “I realised early on that I didn’t have the speed on Kirsten. Maybe if I’d been a bit more sensible about it… but I don’t know what I could have changed tactically. I wasn’t fast enough there and I was never going to get the space or the lap gain. Maybe I let it get in my head and I didn’t fight as much as I should have. I don’t think my legs are terrible. I just wasn’t quite good enough. But there is so much more for the Madison. Laura and I are a pretty formidable team. You know, there are two of us.”

Scotland and Germany have been joined in harmonious union as co-hosts of this innovative European Championships but such was the tension in a taut individual sprint semi-final between Jack Carlin and Stefan Botticher at the Sir Chris Hoy velodrome that you could almost have said auf wiedersehen to all that. The 21-year-old from Paisley said his co-combatant had aimed the German equivalent of a Glasgow kiss at him in the controversial, bad-tempered duel which put paid to yesterday’s attempt to bring back a gold medal for Great Britain on his home track.

With the two men duelling in death-defying high and low-speed cat and mouse tactics, Carlin took the first of the best-of-three sprints, only to be adjudged to have exited the sprinter’s lane in the fraught final burst, his relegation giving Botticher a 1-0 lead even if the call seemed marginal at best. The second battle between the pair was even more feisty, the 26-year-old German reaching the finish line first only to be relegated for barging. As if the drama couldn’t be cranked up any more, Botticher slipped to the track in the decider, which under the rules leads only to a restart. After an interminable wait – during which Ennio Morricone’s theme to spaghetti western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly played - Carlin couldn’t quite get Botticher’s wheel and the German held on by inches. The Scot bravely extended his bronze medal match against Harrie Lavreysen of the Netherlands into a decider but that wasn’t to be either, with another Dutchman, Jeffrey Hoogland taking gold. Carlin is another hoping he has enough left in the tank for one more push, in the keirin today.

“I’ve been better,” he said. “It has been a long day. As expected it was going to be tough throughout the day and my legs just weren’t there. You never learn if you win all the time.

“I got relegated for a very small thing, it was a very small error, I didn’t even see what I had done myself,” he added. “But at the end of the day the decision is made and that was that. There was a bit of argy bargy in the second one, a few headbutts here and there. But at the end of the day we are all there to win, if I had fallen off, I would have got back on. I’ve done it in the past, I know what it is like. It has been a really good day and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed racing in front of this crowd, unfortunately I couldn’t quite bring one home for them.” Ollie Wood and Ethan Hayter were the only other British medalists on the day, taking bronze in the men’s Madison.