Great Britain topped the medal table at the UCI Para-cycling Track World Championships last week for the first time since 2023.

The squad collected 27 medals at the event in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, including eight golds, 12 silvers and seven bronzes. The next best nation was Australia, with 21 medals, of which seven were gold.

Four-time Paralympic cycling champion Kadeena Cox helped lead Britain’s gold rush, returning to the top step – twice – at the World Championships after a two-year rainbow drought.

Not only did the 35-year-old win the kilometre time trial and sprint events in the C4 classification, she also set world records in both barely a day apart: 1:09.545 in the kilo on Friday, and 11.409 seconds in her flying 200m qualifier for the sprint on Saturday morning.

“15 hours… 2 WR,” Cox wrote on Instagram. “The last time I had 24 hours this crazy was Tokyo 2021 [when she won two gold medals – ed.]. And honestly I did not see it coming because I’ve been so under the weather and not feeling like myself.

“I came here to claim the flying 200m WR and I’m buzzing to have also broken the kilo world record.”

Tandem glory

Three new rainbow jerseys went the way of tandem pair James Ball and Aaron Pope, who only joined forces two months ago, but on their Worlds debut, scooped gold medals in the kilo, sprint and mixed team sprint alongside Lizzi Jordan and Anna Whitworth-Hay.

“A crazy eight weeks together,” Ball, a now 10-time world champion, toasted on Instagram.

The treble was made even more impressive by the fact that Pope, a former kilo national champion, only took up tandem piloting this year. In his first major event, he helped guide the now-retired Neil Fachie to two golds for Scotland at the Commonwealth Games.

Paralympic champions Sophie Unwin and Jenny Holl earned their sixth track world title together, this time in the tandem sprint.

Five-star Graham

No British rider took home more silverware from the Netherlands last week than Fin Graham, who signed his name on five medals: one gold, two silvers and two bronzes.

The 24-year-old from the Highlands found himself up against stiff competition in the C3 classification, forced to watch New Zealand’s Devon Briggs win three gold medals before him.

On the final day of competition, though, Graham finally got the better of Briggs, attacking with three laps to go in the scratch race to win his first track world title since 2023. “What an amazing way to end the year,” he said.

There was also a maiden rainbow jersey for 27-year-old Rebecca Newark in the C5 kilo. A former cricketer, Newark only came across to para-cycling four years ago, and was competing on what proved to be a memorable Track Worlds debut.

All the GB medallists

Gold

Men’s C3 scratch race – Fin Graham
Men’s tandem 1km TT – James Ball and Aaron Pope
Men’s tandem sprint – James Ball and Aaron Pope
Mixed tandem team sprint – Lizzi Jordan, Anna Whitworth-Hay, James Ball and Aaron Pope
Women’s C4 1km TT – Kadeena Cox
Women’s C4 sprint – Kadeena Cox
Women’s C5 1km TT – Rebecca Newark
Women’s tandem sprint – Sophie Unwin and Jenny Holl

Silver

Men’s C3 elimination – Fin Graham
Men’s C4 1km TT – Jody Cundy
Men’s C4 elimination – Archie Atkinson
Men’s C4 scratch – Archie Atkinson
Men’s tandem IP – Morgan Fice-Noyes and Chris Latham
Women’s C2 elimination – Millie Cass
Women’s C2 scratch – Millie Cass
Women’s C2 sprint – Elisabeth Simpson
Women’s C5 scratch – Morgan Newberry
Women’s tandem 1km TT – Sophie Unwin and Jenny Holl
Women’s tandem IP – Sophie Unwin and Jenny Holl
C1-5 mixed team sprint – Kadeena Cox, Fin Graham and Jody Cundy

Bronze

Men’s C3 1km TT – Fin Graham
Men’s C3 scratch – Jacob Smith
Men’s C3 sprint – Fin Graham
Men’s C4 sprint – Archie Atkinson
Women’s C5 scratch – Crystal Lane-Wright
Women’s tandem 1km TT – Lizzi Jordan and Anna Whitworth-Hay
Women’s tandem sprint – Lizzi Jordan and Anna Whitworth-Hay

Great Britain’s Anna Morris made it three gold medals from three events at the UCI Track World Championships on Saturday, adding a Madison title to the team pursuit and omnium titles she won earlier in the week.

The 31-year-old teamed up with 19-year-old elite Track Worlds debutant Erin Boothman in the hand-slinging event in Shanghai, China. The pair scored in six of the 12 sprints, won two of them, and gained a lap on the field to win with 40 points ahead of France’s 33.

“I think we did a really good job of how we wanted to execute,” the now seven-time world champion Morris said afterwards.

With the victory, Morris became the first woman to win all three of the team pursuit, omnium, and Madison – the three Olympic endurance events – at a UCI Track Worlds since the Madison was introduced for women in 2017.

“I’m quite speechless,” she said of the feat. “I think it’s going to take a while to sink in. It’s been a busy few days and [I’ve been] just trying to focus on one thing at a time. Now I’ve got a good amount of time to reflect and enjoy all the moments of this week.”

Boothman, already a four-time world champion as a junior, has added two senior world titles to her palmarès this week, having also won the team pursuit on Thursday. She has the chance to win a third in the points race on Sunday.

“I’m excited for it,” the teenager said. “I’m going to give it my best bash. I’m definitely running on high morale from the last two races.”

Couzens 'in shock' at IP win

In an all-British women’s individual pursuit final, Millie Couzens pipped Josie Knight to the gold medal by half a second.

The former British road champion qualified first in the 4km event with a time of 4:21.161 on Saturday morning. She then led from the first lap in the final, going on to clock a 4:21.505, and claim her second world title. Her first, like Boothman, came in the team pursuit on Thursday.

“It’s amazing. I’m still in shock, to be honest,” Couzens said. “I had absolutely zero expectations going in. I was like, ‘If I can get on the podium, that would be a really good result.’ I didn’t expect this.”

On racing against Knight, a double European individual pursuit champion, Couzens said: “It’s always a bit weird racing against a team-mate, but actually it was quite nice: it feels like you’re in it together.”

Elsewhere, Olympic Madison champion Iúri Leitão (Portugal) earned his second world title in the men's omnium. Great Britain’s Henry Hobbs went into the final points race in third, but slipped to sixth overall after various riders gained laps. Fabio Van den Bossche (Belgium) came second and Tim Torn Teutenberg (Germany) third.

The only other medal event on Saturday was the women’s kilometre time trial, which was won by Germany’s Pauline Grabosch. Hetty van de Wouw (Netherlands) took the silver, six tenths of a second down on Grabosh’s winning 1:04.572. Sofie van Rooijen (Netherlands) finished third.

The Track Worlds will come to a close on Sunday with five more world titles on the line: men’s sprint, women’s keirin, women’s points race, men’s elimination race and men’s Madison.

Great Britain currently lead the medal standings with six golds. The last time the nation won as many gold medals was in 2012. They claimed nine in 2008.

Anna Morris and Mark Stewart starred for Great Britain at the UCI Track World Championships on Friday with victories in the women's omnium and men's points race.

The pair doubled their country's gold medal haul at the championships in Shanghai, China, adding to the titles already won in the women's team pursuit and men's scratch race.

Morris's omnium win continued a stellar year for the 31-year-old, who, prior to Friday, had already collected two European titles, two Commonwealth Games titles and a world title in the team pursuit this year.

"It's amazing," she said of her sixth career rainbow jersey. "These stripes are hard-earned, and it was tough racing out there today."

A mass pile-up in the scratch race, the first of the four events of the omnium, saw the defending champion Lorena Wiebes (Netherlands) crash out of the competition.

Morris, who won the European omnium title in February, was the most consistent throughout the events; she finished third in the scratch race, won the tempo race, and then placed third in the elimination race to head into the final points race with a tally of 112, and a 12-point lead over Tsuyaka Uchino (Japan).

She then cruised through the final to beat Uchino by 11 points.

"I just took each race as it came, and then in the points race, you race against the standings," Morris said. "I left it all out there, which is what you want at the end of a long day. To come away with the win, I’m really happy with that."

Gold at last for Stewart

Stewart's mastery in the points race earned him a well-deserved and long-awaited first career world title.

The 31-year-old, a bronze medallist in the same event in 2018 and twice a silver medallist in the Madison, scored in 11 of the 16 sprints in the 160-lap race, winning three of them.

He led by just two points going into the final lap, where second across the line brought his tally to 35 points – seven ahead of the Olympic omnium champion Benjamin Thomas in second.

“Those words – ‘world champion’ and my name – in a sentence, I started to think I wouldn’t hear them,” Stewart said afterwards. “Right now, it feels a bit surreal, to be honest. I’m just over the moon.”

The Scot went on to thank his road team, Modern Adventure Pro Cycling, who he said had given him “a new lease of life” since he joined them this season.

“I’ve really found a new strength this year,” he said. “Combine that with the full support of British Cycling – to give an old dog like me a place and somewhere to express myself and race like I do.

“Tonight the race went my way. It was on and off, it was a thousand repeated efforts, and that’s what I like.”

Suspense swelled at the end of the points race as Denmark’s Carl-Frederik Bévort attacked in search of a lap gain. Had he made it, he would have overhauled the standings and catapulted himself to top spot, but ended up narrowly missing the catch before the race ended. Portugal’s Carlos Salgueiro placed third.

In the women’s sprint finals, Emma Finucane sealed a valiant silver medal against home favourite Yuan Liying (China), who beat the Welshwoman 2-0 in the final.

The 21-year-old Chinese rider won her first world title on Wednesday in the team sprint. In the second match-up of the final, she gained a jump on Finucane, previously a two-time world champion herself in the event, to win by a matter of bike lengths.

Great Britain's Sophie Capewell missed out on the bronze medal in a photofinish decider against Japan's Mina Sato. The difference was a thousandth of a second.

Milan breaks world record

Elsewhere, Jonathan Milan broke his own world record in qualifying for the men’s individual pursuit, becoming the first person in history to go sub-3:59 with a 3:58.850.

The Italian went on to go almost two seconds slower in the final, but still six seconds faster than his opponent, Denmark’s Frederik Madsen, who himself broke the four-minute barrier in qualifying.

"It was a goal [to break the world record], but I actually didn't really think about it," the now two-time individual pursuit world champion said. "It's not a super, super fast track – it's an OK track with the conditions. We're all pushing our best to make the best out of it. I'm just happy for how it went."

Filippo Ganna, a previous world record holder in the 4km event, took bronze.

In the men’s kilometre time trial, the world record holder Jeffrey Hoogland regained his crown after falling short to his fellow Dutchman Harrie Lavreysen in each of the last two years. Lavreysen, already a team sprint and keirin gold medallist in Shanghai, chose not to defend his title.

France’s Etienne Oliviero finished runner-up, more than six tenths of a second off Hoogland’s winning 58.713 seconds. Great Britain’s Joe Truman claimed the bronze medal for the third year in a row, clocking 59.414 after his visor appeared to fly off his helmet mid-effort.

Italy’s Jonathan Milan broke his own individual pursuit world record at the UCI Track World Championships on Friday.

The 26-year-old clocked a time of 3:58.850 in qualifying for the 4km event in Shanghai, China, becoming the first rider in history to go below 3:59.

The velodrome in Shanghai is located at sea level, meaning Milan did not benefit from the low air density of higher-altitude efforts. Low air density reduces aerodynamic drag.

His previous benchmark was 3:59.153, set at the Track Worlds two years ago in Ballerup, Denmark.

"It was a goal [to break the world record], but I actually didn't really think about it," Milan later said.

"It's not a super, super fast track – it's an OK track with the conditions. We're all pushing our best to make the best out of it. I'm just happy for how it went."

A two-time Tour de France stage winner who rides for Lidl-Trek on the road, the Italian went on to beat Frederik Madsen (Denmark) in the final with a time of 4:00.769 to earn his second individual pursuit world title.

Madsen qualified in 3:59.979 on Friday, and himself became only the fifth rider to break the four-minute mark.

The individual pursuit, though not part of the Olympic programme, is one of the blue ribbon events at track cycling championships. It consists of a single rider completing 16 laps of a 250m track – 4km – from a standing start.

During the event, two riders start their efforts on opposite sides of the track. While it is only each rider's time that seeds them in qualifying, if one rider catches the other in the finals, they are declared the winner.

Filippo Ganna (Italy) beat Rasmus Pedersen (Denmark) to the bronze medal in the third place ride-off on Friday.

Ganna has previously broken the world record four times: twice in 2019, once in 2020, and then again in 2022 with a 3:59.636.

That benchmark stood for two years before Great Britain’s Josh Charlton bettered it at the 2024 Track Worlds with a 3:59.304.

At the time, the then 21-year-old Charlton said he was in “total shock”. He kept his world record for around six hours before Milan beat it, and him, with a gold-medal ride in the final.

The first person to go sub-four minutes in the individual pursuit was Ashton Lambie (USA). The American clocked 3:59.930 at a behind-closed-doors event at altitude in Aguascalientes, Mexico in 2021.

The individual pursuit was removed from the Olympic programme after the 2008 Games in Beijing, China, and was replaced by the Omnium.

Great Britain won two gold medals in the space of 20 minutes at the UCI Track World Championships in Shanghai, China on Thursday.

Matt Bostock earned the nation’s first rainbow jersey of the championships with a hard-fought victory in the men’s scratch race. A quarter of an hour later, the British women’s team pursuit squad then set out and dominated their final against Italy, leading for more than three quarters of the 4km event, and winning by over five seconds with a 4:04.610.

The quartet in the final included three riders who won the European title and set a world record in February – Anna Morris, Josie Knight and Millie Couzens – plus 19-year-old Erin Boothman, a four-time junior world champion. Megan Barker was also part of the winning team, having subbed in in the first round earlier in the day.

"It was phenomenal," said the now three-time world champion Knight. "Last year, when we came third, we really wanted more. To come back this year and win in the way we did, with a fresh new team – obviously, me, Meg and Anna have been doing it a while, but these two [Boothman and Couzens], it’s their first senior World Championships – to come home with a gold is really special."

Morris explained that the team's strategy in the final was to "come home like a train". After the 31-year-old peeled off, that responsibility fell on Knight, Couzens and Boothman, the latter two on their senior Worlds debuts.

"I’m over the moon to even be riding with these girls,” said Boothman. “To come here, get the experience to even ride with them, but then to come away with gold is super special.”

Great Britain have now won the women's team pursuit nine times since the event was introduced to the Track Worlds in 2008, making them the most successful nation.

Germany earned the bronze medal in Shanghai.

Bostock in control

While the team pursuit gold medal was a collective effort, Bostock’s was one of individual brilliance.

The Manxman animated the 40-lap scratch race from the beginning, before setting off solo after the breakaway Alex Vogel (Switzerland) around the halfway mark, and catching and passing him with around 10 laps remaining.

Bostock then ploughed on at the front of the race to hold off the bunch by more than half a lap. Tom Sexton (New Zealand) finished second, with Lindsay De Vylder (Belgium) in third.

"It’s been a dream ever since I was a kid," Bostock said of his maiden world title.

"I stepped away from track and watched my partner [Megan Barker] at the Olympics and thought, ‘You know what, I’ll give it a go in the next few years and see where it could take me.’ A couple of years on, I’ve got myself a world title. I couldn’t be happier."

Curiously, Bostock went on to add that he wasn't originally meant to be in the British team for this week's Worlds, and only got the call-up to race the scratch the night before.

"After the Commonwealth Games [where Bostock won the points race] it was the plan to miss this and focus on next year," he explained. "It's been, honestly, crazy."

Danish pursuit supremacy

Also on Thursday, Denmark claimed the men’s team pursuit title for the fourth consecutive year, romping past an Italian quartet that counted Filippo Ganna and Jonathan Milan.

The team of Rasmus Pedersen, Frederik Madsen, Lasse Norman Leth and Carl-Frederik Bévort won with a comfortable five-second margin, clocking 3:40.865 in the final. The time put them within a second of their own world record – 3:39.977 – set, like the British women, at the European Championships in Konya, Turkey, in February.

“[The time is impressive] especially considering the circumstances of this track,” said Pedersen. “It’s maybe not the fastest track, but we executed the perfect race. We have a great team.”

The bronze medal ride-off swung the way of Great Britain who, despite trailing for the middle two kilometres, overhauled their race against France to win by more than three seconds with a 3:47.245.

The British team consisted of brothers Noah and Henry Hobbs, Ethan Vernon, Ollie Wood, and Bostock, who rode in the first round on Wednesday.

Kopecky eliminates all

Elsewhere, Lotte Kopecky cruised to her third elimination race world title. The Belgian fended off Japan’s Yumi Kajihara in the final two, with the USA’s Megan Jastrab rounding out the podium.

“A world title is always special. [The elimination race] is one of my favourite disciplines on the track so it’s really nice to get a win here today,” said Kopecky, who missed last year’s event due to a fracture in her back.

Abi Miller, Britain’s 18-year-old senior Track Worlds debutant, placed ninth.

In the men’s keirin, Harrie Lavreysen collected his second world title of the championships, a day after winning the team sprint with the Netherlands.

The Japanese sprint event now makes up six of the Dutchman’s record 22 track world titles. Max Dornbach (Germany) came second and Shinji Nakano (Japan) third.

No British man made it into the quarter-finals of the keirin. The nation’s hopes had been pinned on the European champion Matthew Richardson, until he was sent home on Monday amid reports of serious misconduct regarding discriminatory posts and behaviour.

Richardson’s withdrawal from the squad came too late for Great Britain to swap another rider into the event.

Olympic team sprint champions Emma Finucane and Sophie Capewell powered through the first rounds of the individual sprint and will compete against each other in the semi-finals on Friday. Finucane is already a two-time world champion in the event.

The other women’s sprint semi-final will be made up of China’s Yuan Liying and Japan’s Mina Sato.

Great Britain’s women’s team sprint trio landed a silver medal at the UCI Track World Championships on Wednesday, but were left with the feeling it could have been more, after Sophie Capewell’s saddle snapped in the final.

The team, which also included Rhianna Parris-Smith and Emma Finucane, led fellow finalists China after the first of three laps, before Capewell took her turn and the trio fell behind, missing out on gold by less than four tenths of a second.

Capewell revealed afterwards that she suffered a mechanical issue, and struggled to stay upright on her bike.

“[It was] a disappointing final. It wasn’t our best ride. My saddle snapped halfway through my lap, so as you can imagine it was quite difficult staying up and finishing off my turn,” the 28-year-old Olympic champion said.

“[I] still put in a good ride considering, but there was a lot more in there, and it would have been really interesting to see what we could have put up in that final.”

Tong Mengqi, Yuan Liying and Jiang Yulu earned China’s first world title in the event since 2015 with a time of 45.578 seconds.

Despite her saddle snap, Capewell praised her opponents, saying they “came out swinging” inside their home velodrome in Shanghai.

“That wasn’t the finished product for us. We’re actually a fairly new team put together. Me and Emma have ridden a lot, and I had the privilege of riding with Rhianna at the start of the year at Euros, but we’re not a well drilled team,” said Capewell, who won Olympic gold in the event with a world-record ride alongside Finucane in 2024.

“To turn up today and get a silver medal is something I’m super proud of,” she said. “At the start of Olympic quali[fication], a silver medal’s not too bad, and leaves us hungry for more.”

Germany claimed bronze to round out the podium.

In the men’s team sprint, the Olympic champions, the Netherlands – made up of Roy van den Berg, Harrie Lavreysen and Jeffrey Hoogland – claimed their eighth title in nine years with a time of 41.954 seconds in the final.

Australia were the last team to beat the Dutch, doing so in 2022, and took silver in Shanghai, having led the first two laps of the final, before Hoogland overhauled the deficit in the last lap to win by more than half a second. China sealed the bronze medal.

Great Britain's men’s team sprint trio, silver medallists last year, placed 6th this time round. The team was without the double European champion Matthew Richardson, who was withdrawn from the squad on Monday amid reports of serious misconduct.

According to The Times, the 27-year-old is under investigation for discriminatory posts and behaviour. Richardson responded to allegations in a statement on Tuesday afternoon, vowing to “co-operate fully” and with “contrition for the feelings of anyone who might be affected”.

The first rainbow jersey of this year’s Track World Championships went to Lorena Wiebes, the now three-time scratch race champion in as many years. The Dutchwoman attacked off the front of the pack inside two laps to go, and was chased by Lara Gillespie (Ireland), who couldn’t find the speed to pip her on the line.

“It’s quite crazy,” said Wiebes, who represents SD Worx-Protime on the road. “Of course, you always go for the win, but it’s always harder and harder to repeat it.”

Denmark will face Italy in the final of the men’s team pursuit on Thursday. Great Britain qualified for the bronze medal ride-off against France.

The British women’s team pursuit squad qualified first on Wednesday, with the first round and finals to follow on Thursday.

2026 UCI Track Cycling World Championships
Date: Wednesday 14 October - Sunday 18 October
Where: Shanghai, China
Events: 22
How to watch: BBC iPlayer (UK), TNT Sports (UK), Flosports.tv (US), Stan Sport (Aus), UCI Youtube (geo-restriced)

The Track Cycling World Championships take place in China for the first time in its 123 year history. The 250 metre, indoor Shanghai velodrome in Chongming District opened in December 2023, and this is its first international event.

400 riders from 46 nations will compete in the 22 events over five days. British sprinter Matthew Richardson however will not be one of them, as he was withdrawn from the event and sent home by British Cycling just days before the racing started.

The Times has reported that Richardson is under investigation for circulating discriminatory posts and behaviour. The sprinter, who won two silver medals at the Paris Olympics for Australia before switching nationalities, took to Instagram to say he would co-operate fully with the process.

Having topped the medal table last year, the Dutch are once again expected to be the strongest team on the track, in part thanks to sprinter Harrie Lavreysen, who already holds 20 world titles and is undefeated in the sprint since he first won it in 2019. At 29, Lavreysen is already considered the greatest male sprinter of all time.

Great Britain's best chance of gold comes with the women's sprint squad, led by 2025 sprint world champion Emma Finucane, who, coming into these championships, said she wanted to become 'the most successful British sprinter.

The full schedule, live timings and results will all be posted on the Tissot Timing website throughout the event.

2026 Track Cycling World Championships - riders to watch

Harrie Lavreysen (Netherlands)
The Dutchman is epxected to add to his massive haul of world titles in Shanghai. A former BMXer, no rider has found a way to beat him in the sprint since 2018, the year before his run of wins from 2019 onwards that also includes Olympic Games. Expect him to compete in all sprint competitions. He was part of the trio that qualified fastest by more than a quarter of a second in the men's team sprint on the opening morning. His biggest challenger might be from a team mate.

Lorena Wiebes (Netherlands)
The Dutch sprinter is almost unbeatable on the road, and so it proved on the track as she won the first event, the women's scratch race. No doubt with one eye on the 2028 Olympic Games in LA, Wiebes also rode the team pursuit, qualifying as the fourth fastest nation, nearly six second behind Great Britain

Emma Finucane (Great Britain)
Three world and one Olympic title make Finucane the most decorated rider in the British team, despite only being 23 years old. She became the first sprinter to win four golds in one Commonwealth Games earlier this year winning the sprint, team sprint, keirin and 1,000m tt. Whether or not she will be affected by the withdrawal from competition of her partner Matt Richardson remains to be seen.

Lotte Kopecky (Belgium)
While the former road world champion has had a poor season by her own very high standards, she remains a standout rider in the women's endurance events with six world titles under her belt. She's down to ride the elimination race, Madison, and omnium - teams can change riders at the last minute if they wish. Kopecky has a decorated palmares, but is still missing an Olympic title. She will have one eye on the LA Games, but as such a standout rider, all her competitors will have one eye on her when racing.

Taylor Phinney (USA)
Back riding a major track competition for the first time in 16 years; the American has come out of retirement in a bid to compete in the 2028 Olympic Games. Having won the individual pursuit world title early in his career, Phinney did not compete on the track once he switched to the WorldTour. The USA qualified seventh fastest in the team pursuit and Phinney is only a substitute for the individual pursuit

Walter Fowler knew that, as long as he completed two laps of the track, he would become world champion.

He was, after all, the only rider competing in the 500m time trial in his 90-94 age bracket. In fact, he was the only person over 90 competing at all at the UCI Masters Track World Championships in London last week.

“I always am the oldest on the list at the Worlds,” said Fowler, who turned 92 earlier this year. And even still, he adds, “there were several riders, all the way down to 75-79 [age bracket], that were slower than me.”

Fowler’s time of 50.06 seconds delivered him a new world best, if only for the fact that nobody his age had ridden the event before. He had to ask for special dispensation from the organisers to allow him to race alone in his age bracket, and after fighting off some “dodgy” health issues, gave himself only five weeks to train.

“In that time I concentrated entirely on a single objective: the 500m. No other distance. All that mattered was having a good start, a good middle, and a good finish,” he told Cycling Weekly.

“Unfortunately, I did get a good start, but I started to die in the middle and second laps. But that’s always been my character ever since I started back in 2008. I’ve always had a fast first lap.”

Fowler has now won four Masters world titles since his championships debut in Sydney, Australia almost two decades ago.

His latest rainbow jersey, won last Thursday inside the Lee Valley Velodrome, earned him a 30-second applause – more than half the time his entire effort took – during the medal ceremony. He then held both his hands in the air and bowed to the crowd, before another rider approached him for a selfie.

“I do seem to have raised enthusiasm in a lot of the cyclists, who are probably coming up to the point where they’re wondering, ‘Will I be able to continue much longer?’,” Fowler said. “They’re then able to see, ‘Well, if Walter Fowler can do it at 92, then I certainly can at 88.’ It’s useful in inspiring people.”

Fowler, too, has his own inspirational figures. Speaking to Cycling Weekly two years ago, he explained he was aiming for the 90-94 Hour Record, held by American Carl Grove at 34.498km, but has since changed his mind – “it’s exceptionally fast, so it may not be in my interest to flog myself for it,” he said.

Instead, he is chasing the trail blazed by Frenchman Robert Marchand, who set the first Hour Record in the 100-plus age category, did the same in the 105-plus, and died aged 109 in 2021. Fowler would first like to take the 95-99 age group record. “I don’t make a great fuss about it, but it’s just a quiet resolve that I shall be going on to challenge the 100 result,” he said. He’ll be able to do so in 2034.

In the meantime, he has already marked next year’s Masters Track Worlds in his diary, and is planning a tilt at the 2km individual pursuit, as well as defending his 500m title.

“I’ve had the pursuit world title at other, younger age groups, so I know I can do it,” he said. “Three minutes is the sort of target for me. I’ve done three minutes before and had a record at three minutes.

“Whether I can make that same amount, I don’t know, but that’s not the point; the point is to try my best and get myself fit enough,” he continued. “I don’t consider that to be overdoing it.”

Track sprinter Matthew Richardson has been withdrawn from the Great Britain squad ahead of this week’s UCI Track World Championships and is reportedly under investigation for misconduct.

British Cycling confirmed Richardson’s withdrawal in a statement shared with Cycling Weekly, but did not provide a reason.

The news comes amid a report in the The Times that the Olympic silver medallist is being investigated by British Cycling over "serious misconduct".

Richardson was named last Wednesday in the 20-rider squad for the Track World Championships, which begin on Wednesday in Shanghai, China.

He is understood to have travelled to the competition with the team, where he was due to make his racing comeback after a serious crash in Japan in July.

The 27-year-old was expected to compete in three events in China: the team sprint, sprint and keirin. Great Britain's men’s sprint squad will instead rely on Harry Ledingham-Horn, Ed Lowe and Joe Truman.

A statement from British Cycling said: "British Cycling can confirm that Matt Richardson has been withdrawn from the Great Britain Cycling Team squad for the upcoming 2026 Tissot UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Shanghai, China."

Cycling Weekly has contacted Richardson for comment.

Born in Maidstone, UK, Richardson first represented Australia in track cycling, having moved to the country when he was nine years old. He switched his racing nationality to British in August 2024, after winning two silver medals and a bronze for Australia at the Paris Olympics.

In August 2025, he became the 'fastest man in the world' when he broke the 200m flying lap world record at a behind-closed-doors event in Konya, Turkey.

He won two silver medals at last year's UCI World Championships in Santiago, Chile, and was set to go into this year's event as the reigning European sprint and keirin champion.

"I always expect a high level of myself, and I do truly believe that I stand a chance at winning world titles," he said earlier this month, looking ahead to the Worlds in Shanghai.

“I haven’t raced since the crash, but there’s nothing to indicate that I’m not on my best possible form. If I was doing the times and the powers that I’m doing in training without the crash, I would have zero concern coming into the World Championships. I’ve got to take that as confidence.”

British Cycling told The Times that they do not comment on internal investigations.

Emma Finucane has made clear her goal to become “the most successful British sprinter” as she heads into her fifth UCI Track World Championships.

The 23-year-old is one of 20 riders who will represent Great Britain at the event in Shanghai, China this week. She enters the competition off the back of her most dominant season to date; she set a world record in the flying 200m en route to winning a European title in February, clean swept three events at the National Championships, four at the Commonwealth Games, and won at the UCI World Cups in Hong Kong and Malaysia.

Now looking to continue that golden run, Finucane said the upcoming Worlds are “going to be a big one”.

“This year we’ve raced a lot more than last year, so I feel like I’ve gained some consistency. I’ve got really good momentum off the back of Europeans and Commies. I definitely feel really good,” the Welshwoman said in a round table interview.

Finucane was 21 when she became Olympic champion in the team sprint in 2024 alongside Sophie Capewell and Katy Marchant. The team will be without Marchant in Shanghai, replaced by Rhianna Parris-Smith, after the 33-year-old announced her retirement from the Great Britain Cycling Team last month.

“She paved the way for us,” Finucane said of Marchant. “She was in Rio [in 2016] getting a bronze medal. She’s been to three Olympic Games, won gold with us in Paris, and has been an absolute, I think for me, inspiration.”

It’s a similar legacy to what Finucane hopes will wait for her at the end of her career.

Asked what motivates her to keep winning races, she said: “I think it’s really important to look back on what I’ve done and be really proud. I can’t believe that I’ve done so much in my career already at 23 years old, but for me, moving forward, there are goals, like I want to win two individual gold medals in Los Angeles [Olympics 2028].

“There are many other things I want to achieve; I want to be the most successful British sprinter, and add more world titles. I think Victoria Pendleton's got nine.”

Pendleton claimed her first rainbow jersey in 2005 when she was 24. Finucane at 23 already has three, one collected in Glasgow in 2023 and two in Copenhagen in 2024.

She will be a favourite in each of the three events she is competing in in Shanghai: the team sprint, sprint and keirin. “I’ve been in this position before,” she said, and though that doesn't faze her, she knows things don’t always work out as expected; In Santiago de Chile last year, Finucane was relegated in the quarterfinals of the individual sprint for deviating into her opponent's lane. She finished the competition sixth overall.

“One thing I’ve really learned about myself is: yes, I can physically be in the best shape, but I have to take it race by race,” she said. “You have to get to the final first.

“I feel like, physically, I’m in a really good place. It’s all about mentally now executing every race, riding the people that are there. I think it’s going to be a really fast World Champs. I think people are going to come out with really quick times. I think the racing is going to be coming down to the line, but I’m ready to put up a fight and see what I can do.”

The UCI Track World Championships will take place at the Shanghai Velodrome on 14-18 October. Watch live in the UK on BBC iPlayer and TNT Sports.

The full Great Britain squad for the event is below.

Men’s endurance
Matthew Bostock
Henry Hobbs
Noah Hobbs
Mark Stewart
Ethan Vernon
Ollie Wood

Women’s endurance
Megan Barker
Erin Boothman
Millie Couzens
Josie Knight
Abigail Miller
Anna Morris

Men’s sprint
Harry Ledingham-Horn
Ed Lowe
Matthew Richardson
Joe Truman

Women’s sprint
Sophie Capewell
Emma Finucane
Rhianna Parris-Smith
Lowri Thomas

British track sprinter Matthew Richardson believes “a line was crossed” when he was taken out by another rider while racing in Japan this summer.

The 27-year-old suffered a broken shoulder and spent four days in hospital after he crashed on an asphalt velodrome during a Keirin World Series event in Tachikawa at the end of July.

Footage of the incident shows another rider cutting across the track and ramming into Richardson, in a move the Briton believes was intentional.

“I think a line was crossed that day, for sure,” he said in a round table interview ahead of his comeback at next week’s UCI Track World Championships. “We understood the risk as international racers coming in to race Japanese keirin, we knew it was argy-bargy. I think there is a difference between argy-bargy and intentionally taking a wider line to hit someone off their bike.

“I think it’s just a shame that a rider has decided to put another person’s safety at risk like that. Like I said, we do understand the risks, but I think that was probably a step too far.”

The rider who crashed into Richardson, Japan’s Gento Suzuki, was disqualified from the race. He posted on X afterwards: “I’m sorry for disqualifying in Tachikawa. There are no excuses – it was simply down to my own lack of skill!”

Richardson said he has received no direct apology since the crash. “I haven’t spoken to him, don’t intend to speak to him, and that’s that,” he said.

Due to his injuries, Richardson had to miss the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, where he was due to make his debut for Team England. He watched the competition instead from his hospital bed in Japan, as he waited for his broken scapula and swollen hip to heal.

“This was definitely the worst crash I’ve ever had,” he said. “It’s the first time that I’ve ever crashed and not basically gotten up and walked it off. I was just stuck to the floor. My whole right side just felt like it was on fire.”

Richardson returned to light turbo training a week later – “I was back on the bike before I could walk without a crutch” – and within two weeks was sprinting again at full tilt.

Capping his comeback, the double Olympic silver medallist has today been named as part of Great Britain’s 20-rider squad for the Track Worlds in Shanghai, China, scheduled for 14-18 October.

His injuries, he says, have taken longer to heal than expected. But he’s grateful they weren’t worse. “If I’d landed in a slightly different way, I might not be walking,” he said.

“Things have progressed very well, but at the time I thought the World Championships were more likely to be a no-go. I just really wanted to try and challenge myself and still make the Worlds.

“I haven’t raced since the crash, but there’s nothing to indicate that I’m not on my best possible form. If I was doing the times and the powers that I’m doing in training without the crash, I would have zero concern coming into the World Championships. I’ve got to take that as confidence.”

Richardson’s sole career world title came in the team sprint in 2022, then representing Australia prior to his nationality switch after the 2024 Paris Olympics. Five times a Worlds silver medallist, his big rival is the Netherlands’ Harrie Lavreysen, the most successful track cyclist of all time with 20 rainbow jerseys.

In Shanghai, Richardson will compete in the team sprint, individual sprint and keirin, and could face Lavreysen in all three finals.

“I always expect a high level of myself, and I do truly believe that I stand a chance at winning world titles,” Richardson said.

“Going there and medalling would obviously be fantastic – I think that’ll be a really good showing of the rehab and the team I’ve got at British Cycling getting me to that level, but I’m still going [to Shanghai] to win gold.”

The UCI Track World Championships will take place at the Shanghai Velodrome on 14-18 October. Watch live in the UK on BBC iPlayer and TNT Sports.

The full Great Britain squad for the event is below.

Men’s endurance
Matthew Bostock
Henry Hobbs
Noah Hobbs
Mark Stewart
Ethan Vernon
Ollie Wood

Women’s endurance
Megan Barker
Erin Boothman
Millie Couzens
Josie Knight
Abigail Miller
Anna Morris

Men’s sprint
Harry Ledingham-Horn
Ed Lowe
Matthew Richardson
Joe Truman

Women’s sprint
Sophie Capewell
Emma Finucane
Rhianna Parris-Smith
Lowri Thomas

Olympic champion Katy Marchant has announced her retirement from track cycling after 13 years on the Great Britain Cycling Team.

The 33-year-old, a heptathlete as a teenager, joined the national squad in 2013, and went on to represent Great Britain at three Olympic Games, winning the gold medal in the team sprint in Paris 2024.

She leaves the sport a former world and European champion, and the current world record holder in the team sprint, alongside her team-mates Emma Finucane and Sophie Capewell.

“I’ve achieved more than I could have ever dreamed of achieving. Inevitably I was going to retire at some point, and I always just said, ‘You’ll know when you know. I don’t really know what you’ll know, but you’ll just know.’ And guys, I just know,” Marchant told Cycling Weekly and other media in a round table interview.

“It’s not been a difficult decision. Don’t get me wrong, there have been moments where I’ve thought, ‘Could I just…? Should I just…? What if I just…?’ But I know what it takes to push on for another two years, and I’m incredibly proud of where I’ve got to and what I’ve done. I just don’t want to make those choices anymore to keep doing what it takes to get to LA [Olympics in 2028].”

“I never wanted to walk away from this sport because I had to, because I felt like I’d overstayed my welcome, or because physically I wasn’t capable anymore,” she continued. “I’ve written the story for the last 13 years, and I wanted to finish it the way I wanted to finish.”

Three years after first taking up track cycling, Marchant won bronze in the individual sprint on her Olympic debut at Rio 2016. She then spent a challenging period as the sole member of Britain’s women’s sprint programme, following the retirement of her close friend and team-mate Becky James in 2017, and qualified alone for the Tokyo Games in 2021.

In 2022, Marchant took time away from racing to give birth to her son, Arthur. She returned in 2023 to help spearhead the sprint programme’s resurgence.

“The whole of 2024 was an incredible year for me,” she said. Between January and November that year, Marchant became European champion in the 500m time trial, Olympic and world champion in the team sprint, and the world record holder. “That’s what dreams are made of,” she said.

“There’s a small part of me that’s a little bit sad I’m not going to be part of [the GB women’s sprint programme] anymore, but at the same time, I still carry a lot of pride that I’ve helped build that,” she said.

Following a crash into the stands at the UCI Track Champions League in December 2024, in which she broke her arm and two fingers, Marchant put her racing on hold in 2025 to have a second child, Walter.

Again, she returned to elite competition, representing England at the 2026 Commonwealth Games, where she won silver in the team sprint. It was at that championships, she said, that she first had thoughts of retiring.

“I just had this funny feeling,” she said. “In the middle of the day, I spoke to Emma [Finucane] and told her what I was feeling and explained the feelings and I said, ‘Look, if this is the last day that I’m racing ever, I want to flipping enjoy it, and I want you to enjoy it with me.’”

Her final race was the keirin on the Sunday, in which she finished fifth and Finucane first.

Asked about her post-retirement plans, Marchant said she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. She lives on a farm outside of her hometown of Leeds with her husband, Rob, and their two sons. “I’ll be driving tractors through the summer, but I’ll definitely need to find that thing for myself,” she said.

“I’ve not really thought that far ahead, other than closing this chapter of my current life and reflecting on it in a nice way.

“Hopefully I can pave the way for not just cyclists but mums in sport. To be able to achieve that, and to do that twice, it’s quite unheard of, and to get back to a very, very competitive high level, I’m incredibly proud of myself. I hope people can watch that or learn from that and think that it is possible and worth doing.”

A motor-paced event will be reintroduced to the UCI Track World Championships next year after more than three decades off the programme.

Stayer racing, which involves six riders drafting behind motorbikes at speeds of up to 100kph, was last included in the Track Worlds in 1994, and will return to the championships in Paris, France in 2027.

The news came at the end of a wide-ranging UCI press release earlier this week, and took members of the motor-pacing community by surprise.

“It literally has just come out of the blue,” said Paul Curran, a four-time British stayer champion who competed in the event at the 1994 Worlds in Palermo, Italy. “I wasn’t expecting anything. There’s been no rumours of it or anything.”

“I thought it was a joke at first,” said UK race organiser Graham Bristow, a stalwart of the motor-pacing community. “Obviously I’m very pleased about it. I just wish it hadn’t been so long before they reinstated it… For the last 30 years, everyone’s been telling me it’s dead.”

Dating back to the late 19th century, stayer racing is a “totally different animal” to the more widely practised derny racing, Bristow explained; pacers stand up to create a bigger draft, and straddle larger motorbikes, equipped with a roller at the back pressing against which the rider races. The rider’s bike is also adapted with a smaller front wheel (24-inch) and reversed fork blades.

Due to the specialist equipment required, stayer racing is not widely practised, but is still prominent across mainland Europe, particularly in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France.

German riders won this year’s men’s and women’s UEC Track Stayer European Championships, held in Italy in July, in finals that lasted 40 minutes for the men and 30 for the women – a format likely to be copied at the Track Worlds.

Former British derny champion Dannie Watkinson placed sixth at the recent Euros, in the first final ever held at the championships for women. “I’d absolutely love to race at the World Champs for the stayer,” she said. “That would be such an experience, and I think it’s amazing that they’ve added it into the OG World Champs and not made it a separate event.

“It really grows the general public’s knowledge of it,” Watkinson added.

Similarly, former two-time British derny champion Matt Gittings, who has been stayer racing since 2012, has his sights on competing at next year’s Worlds. Asked how he reacted to the announcement of the event’s inclusion, he said: “That wasn’t on my bingo card… It’s a really unique and crazy discipline. It’s been such a small, little niche in cycling. It’s cool it’s going to be on the world stage.”

The fastest speed Gittings has reached on a stayer bike is 111kph, recorded on a 400m outdoor track in Germany. “The average speeds are normally around 75kph [on larger outdoor tracks],” he explained. “On a smaller [250m] indoor track, like the one at the Worlds, it’s going to be more like 65 to 70kph.”

These speeds, combined with large, heavy motorbikes, have raised some safety concerns. One international track coach, who preferred to remain anonymous, told Cycling Weekly the event’s inclusion in the Track Worlds “feels like a recipe for disaster”.

“I know it’s happened before, but when you put the chance of a rainbow jersey on the line, people are going to make decisions that they might not normally make,” they said.

There have also been questions raised about the event’s accessibility due to the need for specially adapted bikes – derny racing, on the other hand, is practised on standard bunch bikes.

“The stayer is going to be more spectacular,” said Gittings. “There’s more noise, it’s bigger, it’s faster, and it was traditionally in the World Championships in the past. I think that’s the reason [the UCI] chose stayer over derny.”

The UCI is yet to release information about the qualification process for the stayer event. The finals will be held some time between 26-30 August during the track competition at next year's 'Super Worlds'.

As the countdown begins, what can fans expect? “It’s a bit like a fairground ride,” said Curran, looking back on his experience as the last generation of stayer racers at the Worlds.

“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ridden, but it’s the most exhilarating and fun thing I’ve ever done on a bike as well. It’s rattling round at speeds you shouldn’t really be doing. It always felt a bit naughty to me.”

Feature image courtesy of Tim Rademacher, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Sixteen years after his last track competition, Taylor Phinney returned to the velodrome on Sunday afternoon and won the team pursuit at the US National Track Championships.

The quartet of Phinney, Anders Johnson, Colby Lange and David Domonoske qualified first in the 4km event with a time of 4:03.688 in Carson, California. They then went on to win the final after only five of the 16 laps, having caught their rivals with just over a minute on the clock.

“Honored to rep the jersey once more,” Phinney posted on Instagram.

Prior to Sunday, the last time the 36-year-old competed on the track was at the UCI World Championships in 2010, when he won the individual pursuit world title and placed third in the omnium.

He announced his comeback this April, with his sights on making the US track squad for the LA Olympics in 2028.

“What started as a return to gravel racing has delicately snowballed into a full on Olympic dream,” he wrote on Instagram at the time.

“The track was where I first found love and success in this sport, it was even the first discipline to break my heart when my specialty event, the individual pursuit, was removed from the Olympic program, which prompted me to swiftly abandon the track and go all in on the road.

“Recently the USA boys have been making huge strides in the Team Pursuit, and I couldn’t be more stoked to be joining them in the chase for the Olympic Dream.”

After dropping track cycling in 2010, Phinney stepped up to the WorldTour in his road career, first joining BMC Racing, and then EF Education First. He retired from road racing in 2019, aged 29, but has competed in gravel events in recent years.

The Olympics in LA carry sentimental value for the Phinney family; Taylor's mother, Connie Carpenter-Phinney, won gold in the inaugural women's road race at the LA Olympics in 1984. His father, Davis Phinney, won bronze in the individual time trial.

“Regardless of whether I make the official team for LA28 or not, I'm honored to be in the running and will look forward to making some World Cup teams to elevate the team to its highest potential and Olympic qualifying position,” he wrote in April.

A full list of the winners at last week’s US National Track Championships is below.

US National Track Championships 2026 winners

Men’s

Team pursuit – Anders Johnson, Taylor Phinney, Colby Lange, David Domonoske
Individual pursuit – Anders Johnson
Omnium – Colby Lange
Scratch race – Aaron Beebe
Elimination race – Colby Lange
Points race – Aaron Beebe
Team sprint – Joshua Hartman, Dalton Walters, Sterling Reneau
Sprint – Dalton Walters
Keirin – Dalton Walters
Kilometre time trial – Dalton Walters

Women’s

Team pursuit – Bethany Ingram, Anna Hicks, Olivia Cummins, Ella Sabo
Individual pursuit – Anna Hicks
Omnium – Anna Hicks
Scratch race – Kimberly Zubris
Elimination race – Chloe Patrick
Points race – Anna Hicks
Team sprint – Emily Hayes, Kayla Hankins, Hayley Yoslov
Sprint – McKenna McKee
Keirin – McKenna McKee
Kilometre time trial – Mandy Marquardt

Former Olympic silver medallist Toshiaki Fushimi has died after crashing in a keirin race in his home country of Japan. The 50-year-old was racing in the Matsusaka Keirin, where he struck a barrier at the side of the track, reportedly in an attempt to avoid a pile-up that was unfolding in front of him.

He sustained spinal and skull fractures in the crash, according to a report by The Independent, and died the following morning.

A celebrated figure in Japanese keirin racing, Fushimi was part of the team sprint trio who won a silver medal for Japan in the Athens Olympics 2004. He racked up 619 career wins, including three Keirin Grand Prix titles – Japan's blue riband keirin event.

His former track rival Josiah Ng paid tribute to Fushimi on social media, writing: "R.I.P. Fushimi San. Toshiaki Fushimi wasn’t just a competitor. He was one of the best keirin riders Japan has ever produced. Grand Prix winner. Olympic Silver Medalist. A true professional on the track. We raced against each other for years. That kind of rivalry builds a respect that doesn’t fade.

"Devastated to hear he lost his life doing what he loved," he added. "My thoughts are with his family and the entire Keirin community in Japan. Rest in peace, champion."

Hiroshi Kido, chairman of the Japanese Keirin Autorace Foundation, said that safety measure would be reexamined: “It is truly heartbreaking that he lost his life in an accident during a race. We will reconfirm our safety measures and thoroughly ensure fair and safe races.”

Keirin became an Olympic event in 2000, but originated as a betting sport in Japan in the 1940s. The bikes are steel with smaller gears and, like the kit used, they are standardised, with riders racing in different colours. In Japan it takes place on large, outdoor velodromes made of concrete, meaning the event is part sprint, part endurance.

Because of the betting aspect of the sport in Japan, when riders undertake a race they are not allowed to communicate with the outside world, explains Brit Joe Truman, who raced the country's keirin series twice.

“Because obviously betting is a massive part, when we go to a race, we’ve got essentially four days where we’re in lockdown and we’re not allowed any devices that transmit information to the outside world," he said.

For each article in this long-running WATT WORKS FOR ME series from Cycling Weekly's print edition, we ask a pro rider about their favourite things in training: what has helped them most in getting to where they are today. The aim is to get to the heart of the beliefs and preferences they hold dear when it comes to building form, maximising fitness and ultimately achieving results. For this edition, we speak to Maddie Leech.

How did you get into cycling?

I started after watching the 2016 Rio Olympics. I wasn’t doing many sports at the time, and track cycling came on [the television]. I got my mum to find me a local club and she found Huddersfield Star Wheelers – I think it was the first one that came up on Google. I actually started with cyclo-cross and then road, but I quickly dropped cyclo-cross because I was terrible at it. I then did track and road as a youth rider.

How do you find splitting track and road?

With GB, the track stuff takes preference. I do find the balance quite hard. A lot of the time, the track competitions are split in between a lot of the main road races. If I’m on track, it’s not much volume, just hard, intense riders. Then if I’m out road racing in Belgium, it’s four hours on the cobbles and in the wet. It’s quite a switch.

What are your favourite training sessions?

I quite like a three-hour session with some Zone 3 blocks of 15-20 minutes each, maybe three times in a ride. I’m a diesel rider, so I find it quite nice to sit at one power and just ride that.

What’s the best training advice you’ve ever received?

Sometimes less is actually more. I used to think I had to smash all of my rides and go as hard as I could, but actually, since I’ve started doing my easy rides easier and my hard efforts harder, I’ve made more of an improvement.

You won your first world title last year. What training went into that victory?

In the Madison, you need a lot of repeated efforts, so I was doing a lot of VO2 efforts, like two-minute efforts, or 30 seconds on and off. I also did a lot of strength stuff, like gym work and using big gears on the road for low cadence, high power.

What has that victory done for your career?

It’s given me a bit more confidence in myself. At that competition, I actually wasn’t feeling my best, and I struggled quite a lot in the team pursuit. The Madison win reminded me that, even if you don’t feel how you think you should, you can still perform well.

What are your long-term ambitions?

I’d like to get to the LA Olympics [in 2028]. I’d like to ride the Madison there, and the team pursuit and the omnium – I’ll take anything if there’s an opportunity.

Quick-fire round

What’s your nickname? Everyone calls me M-Dog.

If you could ride in one place for the rest of your life, where would it be? I quite like the Lake District.

Biggest inspiration? Katie Archibald and Laura Kenny – they’re who got me into cycling.

Cafe stop order? I don’t like coffee, so a smoothie or a Diet Coke, and chocolate cake.

Favourite hobby outside of cycling? Walking in the Peak District.

Best moment of your career so far? Winning the Madison world title.

Worst moment of your career so far? Crashing in the first year I did Paris-Roubaix in 2023. I was in agony.

Dream race to win? The Olympics, Madison.

A youth development plan has been launched by USA Cycling today, which will use grants to try and attract promising junior athletes into track cycling from other forms of cycling, and even completely different sports.

The Youth Track Cycling Development Grant was inspired by the success of the Search for Speed talent transfer program, which seeks to introduce track sprint cycling to a broader and more diverse audience throughout Los Angeles and the Southern California basin.

The new funded membership-supported talent development initiative is designed to help velodromes, clubs and coaches identify talent and encourage junior athletes, primarily aged between 14 and 18, to try track cycling.

The objective of the Youth Track Cycling Development Grant is to use financial support to break down a significant barrier to entry, and create structured development opportunities for athletes who are competing in other cycling disciplines, or pursuing completely different athletic pursuits, so they can experience the excitement of competitive track cycling.

Initially the program hopes to boost the numbers of young people taking part in the sport at local velodrome level, but the longer-term goal is to create pathways for participation in Junior Track National Championships, High School Track National Championships, and to identify athletic potential for future national teams.

“Track cycling has a long history of developing some of the country’s top athletes,” said USA Cycling Director of Membership, Eric Bennett. “The Youth Track Cycling Development Grant is designed to help local programs create welcoming entry points for young athletes while strengthening connections between velodromes, coaches, and the next generation of riders.”

Two grant awards of $2,500 per program are up for grabs, with USA Cycling stipulating that proposals must focus on the development of junior riders (14-18 year olds) and provide a structured curriculum designed to transition athletes into track racing and training. Velodromes, cycling clubs and USA Cycling-certified coaches can all apply for funding, with applications being reviewed by a three-person USA Cycling panel, which will assess the potential impact of the proposed program.

Interested and eligible parties should apply via the website, and if successful can use the funding to facilitate velodrome access, coaching fees, track bike rentals and educational materials related to track cycling safety and athlete development. Applications for the Youth Track Cycling Development Grant open on 27 May and close on 10 June. Award notifications will be distributed by 17 June, and funds are expected to be dispersed by 1 July.

When Katie Archibald attacks, the whole crowd inches forward in their seats. Fans at home reach for the TV remote, and turn the volume up a few notches. Riders crumble in the Scot's wake.

This is the scene that played out again and again during the double Olympic champion's 13-year career, which she has brought to a close today. In that time, she collected more than 50 medals representing Great Britain, including two Olympic golds, seven world titles, and a record 21 European titles.

"I'm not hoping for a grand legacy," Archibald said, "but I hope I've made an impact on the individuals I’ve worked with."

Those that watched her compete, too, will remember her as one of the greats. A dogged attacker, her racing grimace at times looked like a smile. Often, she closed events with a two-handed victory salute to the skies.

Archibald leaves behind a treasure trove of success with her retirement. Here are five of the moments that stand out.

The breakthrough: Commonwealth Games 2014

In the early days of Archibald's track racing career, she set her sight on one goal: representing Scotland at the Commonwealth Games.

She achieved that in 2014, aged 20, and took home a medal, too: bronze in the points race.

Reminiscing in a Q&A shared by British Cycling to mark her retirement, this was the first career highlight that surfaced in her mind.

"It came down to the final sprint, and I feel like I can still go back into my body for that last lap and remember what it was like to try harder than I ever had before," Archibald said. "Every thought disappeared. It was like I didn’t have a brain anymore; I just existed as a body, and it felt incredible."

The riders she shared the podium with that day – silver medallist Elinor Barker and gold medallist Laura Kenny – would end up her Olympic champion team-mates just two years later.

Gold on debut: Rio Olympics 2016

Archibald made her Olympic debut in Rio in 2016, aged 21. She was already an assured racer by this point, holder of a world title and six European titles, but this was the event that would catapult her into cycling legend.

En route to winning the gold medal in the team pursuit, Archibald, alongside Kenny, Barker and Joanna Rowsell, broke the world record three times: first in qualifying, then in the first round, and again in the final.

The Scot felt so connected to her race-winning effort, she said, it was "like my mind left my body" in the final lap. "I don't know if I'll be able to experience that feeling in the future."

More than a decade on, she retires as the world record holder in the event once again; the benchmark now stands at 4:02.808, set by Archibald, Anna Morris, Josie Knight and Millie Couzens at the European Championships in February 2026.

Madison masterclass: Tokyo 2021

"I'll tell you what, that ride from Great Britain was something special. We may never see anything like it again," the Olympics TV commentator declared after Archibald and Kenny won the Madison in Tokyo. "Outstanding", "dominant" and "superb" were also among the words uttered.

The pair's victory was (and here come two more adjectives) both resounding and history-making. In the first-ever women's Madison event at the Olympics, Archibald and Kenny ruled over the competition, claiming 10 out of the 12 sprints, and winning by more than double the points of second place: their 78 to Denmark's 35.

"I've never wanted something so much and I've never been so nervous," Archibald said afterwards.

"I was terrified coming into it, and I think that's made it feel slightly more special to come out with gold."

Omnium dominance: World Championships 2021

Two months after the Tokyo Olympics, Archibald carried her golden form into the UCI Track World Championships in Roubaix, France, where she stunned the rest of the field with a flawless omnium performance.

The 27-year-old won all four events – the scratch race, tempo race, elimination race and points race – to win her fourth world title.

What's even more impressive is that she had done the same thing at the European Championships in Switzerland two weeks prior. It's a party trick she'd go on to repeat again in 2023, when she won her 19th European title, again with a perfect omnium.

Home boards: British Championships 2025

The speakers inside the Manchester Velodrome blasted Scottish singer Gerry Cinnamon's 'She's a Belter' as Archibald exited the track at the British Championships in 2025, the runaway winner of the points race.

Not since 2019 had the Scot competed at the championships, and she returned with a roof-raising spectacle; she took five of the eight sprints, gained a lap on the field, and won by a staggering 37 points.

"My brother [John Archibald] won the national points race in 2018, and similarly was up the road by himself," she recalled afterwards. "When someone you love is in agony, you don't enjoy watching it. I thought, 'The boy needs his bed.' That felt very similar."

The victory brought the loudest roar of the weekend from the crowd – a warm sound that pointed both to the widespread appreciation for Archibald, and the awe she inspired with her racing.

Members of the Canadian women’s track squad have expressed their concern and frustration after Cycling Canada pulled the women’s team pursuit from its 2028 Los Angeles Olympics program.

The federation said it will not field a women’s team pursuit squad at this October’s UCI Track World Championships in Shanghai, China, nor will it look to qualify one for LA. It will continue, however, to fund the men’s team pursuit squad throughout the Olympic cycle.

The decision has drawn indignation from members of the women’s program, who have described it as “gut wrenching and infuriating”.

“What has happened this past week is not something I am willing to stand for,” wrote Fiona Majendie, a reserve member of the squad at the Paris Olympics in 2024, on Instagram.

“People will always try and put a ceiling on you. Cycling Canada is not only putting a lid on the women’s program right now, they are burying it beneath the ground, and they are destroying years of equality as well as the future of the sport in Canada for all our developing juniors,” Majendie continued.

“To rip away our chance to qualify for the Olympics is both gut wrenching and infuriating.”

In a statement shared with Cycling Weekly, Cycling Canada CEO Mathieu Boucher explained the decision was “performance-based [...] informed by objective, evidence-based analysis. While difficult, it was made in the best interest of the program’s long-term success.”

Boucher said the squad’s results since Paris 2024 “were not trending towards medal winning potential” in LA. He added that recent performances, both in competition and training, “did not indicate these gaps were likely to be closed in time” for the 2028 Games.

The Canadian women’s team pursuit squad won bronze medals at both the Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 Olympics. In Paris two years ago, they placed eighth, while the men’s squad were seventh.

More recently, the women’s squad finished ninth at the UCI Track World Championships in Santiago, Chile last October. The men’s squad were 11th.

No Canadian man has won an Olympic medal in track cycling since Curt Harnett took bronze in the men’s sprint in 1996.

Last week, members of the women’s track squad addressed an open letter to Cycling Canada, funding provider Sport Canada and not-for-profit organisation Own the Podium, voicing their concerns of a “disparity in access to high-performance opportunities based on gender”, in particular an “unequal pathway to Olympic participation”.

The squad requested a formal review of the decision to curb the program, and asked for it to be reinstated in time for the 2026 UCI Track World Championships in October.

“None of this happened because the athletes stopped caring or stopped working hard enough,” wrote Lily Plante, a squad member for the last six years, on Instagram.

“Like many others on this team, I sacrificed financially, physically, mentally, and personally to represent Canada on the international stage. I paid thousands of dollars out of pocket to race across the world, qualify spots for Worlds, and keep this program alive because I believed in what it could become.

“Behind every result were athletes doing everything they could with what they were given. And that’s exactly why this hurts so much,” Plante continued.

Ariane Bonhomme, a two-time Olympian who won four team pursuit titles at the Pan American Championships with the squad, said she retired in January, aged 30, after receiving an email saying her Sport Canada funding was being withdrawn.

“The decline of this program has nothing to do with the strength, talent, or commitment of the riders. It has everything to do with how the program has been managed over the past several years,” Bonhomme said.

Canada’s women’s endurance squad funding for the LA Olympics will instead go towards the individual events – Omnium and Madison – as well as the wider development pathway.

“We remain committed to the development of the women’s team pursuit program,” Cycling Canada CEO Boucher said.

“We are taking deliberate steps to strengthen athlete development moving forward. Targeted investments, in collaboration with the cycling ecosystem, will support future growth through key opportunities, including the Junior Track World Championships (August 2026), the Apeldoorn Next Gen Track event (January 2027), the Pan American Championships (February 2027), and the Milton World Cup (April 2027).”

Teenage cyclist Moritz Mauss underwent emergency surgery last weekend to remove a 50cm wooden splinter from his hip after he crashed in an track event.

The incident happened at the International Belgian Track Meeting in Gent on Sunday, when Mauss was competing in the Madison.

Writing on Instagram afterwards, the 18-year-old German, who is part of UAE Team Emirates’ under-23 squad, said he came within centimetres of a “career-ending injury”.

“During my fall, I slid across the track, and a 50 cm long piece of wood splintered from the track and went directly through my hip and upper left leg,” Mauss wrote.

“I was taken directly to the hospital and had surgery only about two hours after the accident. Everything went smoothly, and I am already back home now.

“I got really lucky because the splinter missed my nerves and most of my leg muscles. I will be out for a while now, but it could have been A LOT worse. Only a few centimetres could have meant a career-ending injury.”

Mauss prefaced his post with "trigger warning", and said he initially hesitated to share images of the splinters online, but felt it important to “show these sides of the journey and the sport”.

“Among all the wonderful moments this year and everything this sport has already brought me, those low points are also part of it,” the teenager said.

“We have to accept what happened, and I will make the best of it. The work I have put in over the last few months is definitely not lost, and I am certain there is still a lot to come this season. Time to enjoy some unexpected days off the bike now

The velodrome at Gent’s Vlaams Wielercentrum Eddy Merckx (Flemish Cycling Center Eddy Merckx) is Olympic-sized 250m, made from hardwood, and is home to the Belgian Cycling Team.

The International Belgian Track Meeting is an annual Class 1 event that combines junior, under-23 and elite racing.

Mauss, a junior UCI Track World Championships medallist, competes in both track and road events, and rode the under-23 versions of Paris-Roubaix and Liège-Bastogne-Liège earlier this month. It is uncertain how long he will now be out of competition.

Track cyclist Nikita Kiriltsev was the artist of an astonishing moment at this weekend’s UCI Track World Cup when he sprinted, on foot and wearing cleats, across the line to qualify in the men’s keirin.

Kiriltsev, who is from Russia but competes as a neutral athlete, was one of six riders involved in a heavy crash during the seven-rider event.

France’s Tom Derache won the heat as the only rider to stay upright, but with another qualifying spot available, and the rest of the field lying on the floor, Kiriltsev grabbed his bike by the top tube, ran almost 200m around the final bend and down the home straight, and claimed the second spot in the next round.

The move was perfectly legal, according to UCI regulations. Rule 1.2.109 reads: “A rider may cross the finish line on foot, provided that they have their bicycle with them.”

Kiriltsev’s show of smart judgement came in the kierin’s first round repechage, where he finished 42 seconds behind Derache. Thanks to his running, he qualified by just two seconds ahead of the USA’s Geneway Tang, who chose to remount his bike to finish the race. Great Britain’s Harry Ledingham-Horn also finished a further 10 seconds back.

Afterwards, Kiriltsev rested his bike against the track fence and collapsed on his back on the floor.

A former junior keirin world champion, Kiriltsev went on to progress through the second round repechage and into the minor places final (7-12), finishing 8th overall. Harrie Lavreysen of the Netherlands won the gold medal in the event.

The weekend’s UCI Track World Cup took place in Hong Kong and marked the second instalment of this year's three-part series.

Among the standout riders were Great Britain’s Matthew Richardson, China’s Liying Yuan, and the Netherlands’ Philip Heijnen, all three of whom won two gold medals; Richardson won the team sprint and individual sprint, Yuan the team sprint and the keirin, and Heijnen the omnium and the Madison.

There was also joy for New Zealand, whose men’s and women’s team pursuit squads both won gold.

The next UCI Track World Cup will start this Friday 24 April in Nilai, Malaysia. This year’s UCI Track World Championships, the flagship event of the year, will be held in Shanghai, China in October.

American track, gravel and road cyclist Taylor Phinney has announced his return to racing, seven years after retiring from the sport.

The 2009 individual pursuit track world champion is returning to the discipline, aiming for a spot on the US pursuit team ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

"What started as a return to gravel racing has delicately snowballed into a full on Olympic dream," Phinney wrote on Instagram on Tuesday.

"The track was where I first found love and success in this sport, it was even the first discipline to break my heart when my specialty event, the individual pursuit, was removed from the Olympic program, which prompted me to swiftly abandon the track and go all in on the road," the post continued.

Phinney’s transition to the road had resulted in both triumph and catastrophe. At the 2012 Giro d'Italia, he became the third American to wear the maglia rosa after winning the opening TT stage. A trio of US national TT titles soon followed, but his promising charge was temporarily curtailed by a crash at the 2014 US national championships. There he sustained two breaks in the lower left leg and a knee injury after crashing into a guardrail.

After a dominant year, winning the Tour of Dubai and collecting a stage victory in the Tour of California and the US time trial, he was taken out of the Tour de France squad and into a year of rehabilitation. His official retirement announcement came five years later, when he was just 29: "I feel like my body sort of made this choice for me," he said at the time. "I've now been injured longer than I've not been injured as a professional athlete."

Phinney’s latest comeback began back in November, when training for the team first began. Pushed by his Tour de France Femmes-winning wife, Kasia Niewiadoma, and by his own family’s Olympic legacy. The last time the Olympic Games were held in LA was in 1984, when his mother, Connie Carpenter-Phinney, won gold in the road race. "The seed started to grow and before I knew it all I could think of was closing this final loop in my cycling career," he wrote.

While the transition back into a team environment has been smooth so far, the 35-year-old admitted that he’s got a lot of hard work in the gym ahead of him.

"Regardless of whether I make the official team for LA28 or not, I’m honored to be in the running and will look forward to making some World Cup teams to elevate the team to its highest potential and Olympic qualifying position!"

The ever-lively debate about the UCI’s minimum handlebar widths, and how (and where and why) the new restrictions are going to be enforced, has been reignited after a video emerged of a British Cycling commissaire measuring bar widths and the gap between brake levers at a British road racing event at Lee Valley Velopark in London over the weekend.

The footage, taken by track cyclist and 2025 Master's Kilometre TT National Champion Atiba Quildan (who has posted detailed explainer videos about the subject in the past) showed several riders being forced to significantly adjust their shifters just before riding, in order to comply with the controversial new UCI minimum bar width specifications.

The video sparked a deluge of acerbic comments from other riders, bristling not just about the details and impact of the restrictions, but also the lack of clarity about whether British Cycling was really intending to enforce them to the letter, or not.

Quildan told Cycling Weekly that the problem was a lack of consistency, with anecdotal reports that the restrictions had not been applied at earlier events, and that there had been little coherent advice from the governing body, leaving riders unclear about the legality of their set up. The changes were brought in for safety reasons, and tragically a cyclist did die during a road event at Lee Valley last year, which Quildan believes may have led to the venue having a commissaire there to double down on the enforcement of the UCI rules.

But with confusion reigning, riders were arguably placed in more jeopardy by having to change the position of their shifters at the very last minute. “One guy told me he was struggling to stop,” said Quildan. The situation led to people such as former team pursuit world champion, Hour Record–holder and now head of engineering with Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe Dan Bigham bemoaning a lack of communication from British Cycling about the new regulations.

Amongst the ranks of pro racers there has been a tendency for bar widths to get shorter in recent years, with some notable exceptions, like Classics specialist and multiple cyclo-cross world champion Mathieu van der Poel.

However, midway through last year, as part of a raft of new rules ostensibly intended to improve safety, the UCI announced that a new minimum handlebar width for road bikes of 400mm would be introduced from the beginning of the 2026 season. That's a 50mm increase from 350mm, measured between the outer edges.

This came along with a new minimum gap between the inside of shifter/brake hoods of 280mm. (This latter measurement was a compromise, after the minimum space between levers was initially set at 320mm.) The UCI stated that this rule would apply to bikes taking part in mass-start events. Track bikes, which previously didn’t have a minimum bar width restriction, will see a new rule form January 2027, which specifiies bars must be 350mm outside to outside.

The decision to apply these rules immediately caused concern across the industry, with component manufacturers, team bosses, bike-fit pros and others expressing their disquiet about the impact it might have on production and performance, and critics pointing out that the minimum width stipulation would have an especially negative impact on smaller riders and women cyclists. Initially it seemed as though British Cycling were not going to apply the restrictions, but then out came the video of the commissaire brandishing a yellow measuring stick.

Contacted by Cycling Weekly, British Cycling acknowledged that there had been some confusion around the new UCI technical regulations, and said it was in process of clarifying how the rules would be applied in Britain with all license holders.

The forthcoming clarification stated that, according to British Cycling regulations (R2.1.1, page 109 of the 2026 Handbook): "Unless expressly authorised by the format of the competition, events held under these Technical Regulations are restricted to cycles that are compliant with the UCI Regulations, save for the UCI minimum overall width of handlebars."

British Cycling went on to explain that, in practice, this means the following:

"Riders competing in British Cycling road, circuit and cyclo-cross sanctioned events (including Nat A, Nat B, Reg A, Reg B and Reg C/C+ road and circuit events) do not need to adhere to the new UCI regulation prescribing a minimum overall width of handlebars of 400mm, but they will need to adhere to the minimum distance between the brake lever hoods of 280mm (and also the maximum wheel rim depth of 65mm).

"However, riders competing in UCI road, circuit and cyclo-cross sanctioned events will need to adhere to all UCI regulations. Such events include: Lloyds National Road Championships, The 20th Rutland International CiCLE Classic and the City of London Nocturne Elite Crits. And in cyclo-cross, this applies to any Elite and Junior race which is registered on the UCI calendar."

There is much scepticism amongst riders about whether the new rules actually make cycling safer. “Obviously it’s good that British Cycling have clarified their position, but I don’t think the new UCI rules should have been implemented at all,” says Quildan. “I don’t think anyone has actually crashed because their bars are too narrow”.

And others agree. "Personally I think that there are far more things the UCI and British Cycling should be worrying about for safety," One Life Cycle rider James Ambrose-Parish told Cycling Weekly. "We race on open roads with oncoming cars in the UK with potholes and other road users.

“The people that put in place these rules I’m sure have never ridden narrow handlebars on their road bike. For me [narrow handlebars] haven't affected the way I handle the bike; if anything, they makes it easier to defend your position in a tight bunch and prevent bars getting hooked on other people.

“I think the rule will only hurt those that have tried to optimise their position who maybe don’t have the raw power to win. Cycling is different to other sports where equipment and innovation can largely affect results. It has always encouraged people to find ways to go faster that don’t involve full-time training plans.”

Ambrose-Parish concedes that British Cycling's update today has at least got rid of the grey areas, but he's still faced with a predicament. "For the past two years I have been using the Toot Asha RR 33cm and 35cm, and prior to that was using 33cm alloy track bars as road bars – previously legal for the 35cm outside width that ran up until 2025," he said. "I'll have to rehose the whole bike as they won’t be long enough to accommodate bars… won’t be able to do this before the weekend!"

Six of the best track cyclists in the world will travel to Japan this summer to take part in a keirin racing series.

Britons Matthew Richardson and Joe Truman will join the sprint event’s Olympic and world champion Harrie Lavreysen (Netherlands), as well as a trio of female riders: Olympic champion Ellesse Andrews (New Zealand), Olympic silver medallist Hetty van de Wouw (Netherlands), and the former sprint world champion Mathilde Gros (France).

The participation of international riders comes as part of a rebooted agreement between the UCI and the Japan Keirin Autorace Foundation (JKA). The last cohort that took part in the series did so in 2019, before the Covid pandemic put a halt to the programme.

Speaking to Cycling Weekly, Richardson, the Olympic keirin silver medallist, said he was first approached by the JKA at the UCI Track World Championships in Santiago, Chile last October.

“I’d been wanting to do this for a very long time,” he said. “This has been a massive bucket list item for me, something that I knew if the time came, and if I got invited, I would 100% say yes.

“You start track cycling and, especially as a sprinter, you get to a level where you start to understand the history of the sport, but also the history of the keirin and where it originates from. That's when you're first introduced to this betting sport in Japan.”

Keirin racing emerged in the Asian country in the late 1940s as a post-war gambling sport. It joined the Olympics in 2000, and, in UCI competitions, involves six riders motor-paced by a derny for three laps, before sprinting against each other for three laps.

Traditional Japanese keirin typically takes place on larger, outdoor velodromes made of concrete, meaning the event is part sprint, part endurance. There is standardised equipment for the riders, who use steel bikes with smaller gears and wear multicoloured jerseys and helmets.

Truman, a GB team-mate of Richardson’s, has raced the series twice, and was part of the last international cohort that went to Japan in 2019.

“I learnt how to be a lot more independent,” the recently crowned kilometre time trial European champion said.

“I went last time when I was 20, and I was straight off the plane from the Commonwealth Games. I went from being in a big bubble with physios and everything, straight to a little town in Japan, on my own for six months.”

One of things that most fascinated Truman was the “completely different vibe” around the racing. “Because obviously betting is a massive part, when we go to a race, we’ve got essentially four days where we’re in lockdown and we’re not allowed any devices that transmit information to the outside world,” he explained.

“It’s just books and old iPods and things like that, but it also gives you a good chance to learn Japanese and chat to some other riders... It basically becomes a little digital detox kind of retreat.”

Another difference to UCI racing is that riders have to declare their tactics before each race. They usually do this the night before, Truman explained, and the tactics are announced to fans and punters.

“For international riders, the most common tactic is senko, where you start your sprint quite early, and you aim to be on the front with a lap to go,” he said.

“I'm just really looking forward to going out to do my first race. It's a really nice experience.”

The 2026 Keirin World Series will take place over nine events in velodromes around Japan between 3 June and 1 September. Alongside the racing, the six international riders will live in Japan for four months, during which time they will study the sport and sit exams.

Sir Chris Hoy famously attended keirin school in 2005, before going on to become a double Olympic champion in the event.

While Truman and Gros have competed in the series before, Richardson, Lavreysen, Andrews and Van de Wouw are all first-timers.

“To me it’s all a mystery,” said Richardson. “It’s almost going to feel like a bit of a travel back in time… I don’t think there’s going to be much that applies to indoor racing other than the sort of length of training that we’ll get from it.

“It’s been a dream of mine for many, many years,” Richardson continued. “Now it’s finally happening, I want to really live in the moment and soak it all in, and try and experience and learn as much as I possibly can – I feel super privileged to be invited.”

Prior to Sunday, Olympic team sprint gold medallist Katy Marchant’s last track race ended in her lying among the fans, her arm broken in two places, having crashed over the fence at London’s Lee Valley Velodrome. Now, 15 months and another child later, she’s back chasing the Olympic dream again.

Marchant returned to competition on the final day of the British Track Championships last week, where she raced in the individual sprint. The 33-year-old was ultimately knocked out in the quarterfinals, but the result mattered little; she came off the track smiling, walked to her paddock, and sat with her two sons, Arthur and Walter, the latter she gave birth to just six months before.

“I’m really happy to be back racing – earlier than expected, I think, but things have been going really well and relatively smoothly,” Marchant told Cycling Weekly.

The sprinter’s previous last race came in late 2024 at the UCI Track Champions League (TCL). The event ended up being abandoned so Marchant could receive urgent medical care, after crashing into the front row at the top of the banking in the keirin final. She now races with mementos of the incident: a dark purple scar down her right forearm, and small metal plates holding the bones together.

“It’s been a whirlwind. It was just a bike race and it was just a freak accident. It was a bit unlucky on my part: wrong place, wrong time,” she said.

How much of the crash does she remember? “I totally remember all of it,” she said. “I knew what was going on. I could see the fence coming, but I didn’t quite anticipate going over it.

“I’ve been really lucky in the last 12 years I’ve done this; I’ve never really had many accidents, [only] a couple of slip and slides. It was a little bit unfortunate for the Track Champs to end like that, especially because it was the last race of what had been an incredible year in 2024.”

Marchant won her first Olympic title that summer with a world-record ride in the team sprint alongside Emma Finucane and Sophie Capewell. The trio then went on to win gold at the UCI Track World Championships two months later. Come Christmas, however, and Marchant was sidelined with a broken radius and ulna, as well as two broken fingers.

Recovering from injury was just one part of Marchant’s year off racing. After having her first child, Arthur, in 2022, and coming back “better than ever”, she and her husband Rob added another son, Walter, to their family last August.

“Crazy to think I grew and birthed a human only six months ago,” Marchant wrote on Instagram following her racing return on Sunday.

She told Cycling Weekly that being a mother of two has been “full-on, [I’m] not going to lie – but it’s been great.

“Physically it’s harder to have two children than it is to have one, and obviously my body has taken a bit of a hit from having another baby, but I’ve recovered really well,” she said.

“I’m back training and I feel great. I’m not where I need to be – I’m a million miles away from where I was when I left the sport in 2024 after the TCL – but I feel more confident this time. When I had Arthur [in 2022], there were days were I was like, ‘Am I flogging a dead horse?’ Whereas this time I have more confidence. I know that the bad days will probably make the good days worth it.”

Those good days, she hopes, will come in major competitions this year. Marchant is eyeing a spot in Team England for July’s Commonwealth Games. She also wants to be part of the Great Britain squad at the World Championships in October, with a longer term goal of defending her Olympic title in LA in 2028.

“I’m here to eke out every last bit that I can. It’d be really nice to just maybe have one last dance at the Olympics,” she said.

“I could retire tomorrow with the most amazing career and more than I could have ever dreamed of, but I never want to retire and say, ‘What if?’ I want to push every boundary that I can. The girls have got a great team going on, and I really want to be in that team.”

Six titles at the British Track Championships went back to the same house in suburban Manchester, after sprint couple Matthew Richardson and Emma Finucane clean swept all of their events.

The pair won three gold medals apiece last week – sprint, keirin and team sprint – and in commanding fashion, too, both going undefeated in every heat across the four days.

After the competition finished on Sunday, and the fans filed out, Richardson and Finucane hung back to pose together trackside for the cameras. The photo will now make for the perfect mantelpiece keepsake: a memento to mark a faultless week of racing.

Speaking to Cycling Weekly, Finucane put her success down to “hard work, determination, and the love for winning”.

“The little me is so proud of myself,” said the 23-year-old, who raced on Sunday in the blue bands of European sprint champion. “You don’t know how long your career is going to be, so every moment like this, racing in front of my family and friends, I want to take it. I really enjoyed racing my bike here, and that’s what it’s about.”

After gapping the rest of the field in the keirin final earlier in the week, Finucane put daylight into her rivals again in the sprint on Sunday, ultimately beating Iona Moir 2-0 in the final.

One of the riders she knocked out during the day was PhD student Kathryn Hinton, who described competing against Finucane as “like trying to race a rocket ship”.

“She could do it with her eyes closed, and still be two seconds ahead of me,” Hinton said of the recent 200m flying lap world record breaker. “But it’s cool. She’s in the most phenomenal shape of any woman in track cycling history ever.”

The gulf between Richardson and his competitors was perhaps even larger. Racing for the first time as European sprint and keirin champion, the 26-year-old said the competition was “my training for the week”, and still laid waste to every race.

He rounded off back-to-back trebles with a resounding victory in the keirin on Sunday, attacking long with two laps to go.

“I felt like I needed a little bit more of a longer effort to keep that aerobic fitness in for this week’s training,” Richardson said afterwards.

Asked earlier in the week what motivates him to compete at the Nationals, he said: “I think it’s important that we support racing in general, but obviously, especially British racing. The sport will die if we don’t race and we don’t put on a good show. I’m trying to do my bit to keep the sport alive.”

Elsewhere on the final day of the British Track Championships, 18-year-old Erin Boothman stunned Olympic medallists Anna Morris and Katie Archibald to win the elimination race.

There was an unexpected winner, too, in the men’s points race, as 20-year-old Ben Marsh edged out individual pursuit champion Charlie Tanfield by just three points, winning with a tally of 57 to 54. The commissaires inside the velodrome initially declared Will Perrett to have retained his title – he celebrated with a raised fist as a result – before recounting the points and changing their decision before the podium ceremony.

The para-cycling trio of Jody Cundy, Rebecca Newark and Jacob Smith won the C1-5 mixed team sprint.

Eighteen-year-old Erin Boothman was “over the moon” just to be in the final three of the elimination race at the British Track Championships alongside Olympic medallists Katie Archibald and Anna Morris. So when she dispatched them both, and won the gold medal, she cupped her mouth in disbelief.

“I think a top five and I would’ve been happy, to be honest,” the teenager smiled afterwards. “I wanted to come into this weekend for a few medals, but I certainly wasn’t expecting it in the elimination race.”

Boothman achieved her medal goal on Friday, when she won bronze in the individual pursuit behind the European champion Josie Knight and world champion Morris. In the elimination race, she rode with poise and power, leading most of the event from the front.

“When I came into the final three and I saw it was those two, it was super intimidating,” she said. “They’re two people I look up to massively, and in my eyes, they’re another league above everyone.

“I think I maybe benefitted from the two of them looking at each other, but I certainly wanted to give it my all and see what my legs could do. I think it paid off in the end.”

The winning combination required half-second decision-making: first, Boothman pipped double Olympic gold medallist Archibald to the line. Morris then pinned the teenager up to the top of the banking – “I thought that was maybe my race over,” Boothman said – but rather than surrendering, she launched her sprint early, carrying her speed round the final bend, and raising her fist in the air in victory.

As she came off the track, Boothman sobbed tears of joy. She was greeted at the gate by her GB team-mate Carys Lloyd, who gripped her by the shoulders and congratulated her. The Scot then staggered slowly back to her paddock, as other riders came out of theirs to hug her.

“It means the world,” said Boothman, a four-time junior track world champion, and now Liv AlUla Jayco development team rider.

“Especially in an elimination where anything can happen, I couldn’t be happier to win an elite national title for myself.”

Fresh from breaking a world record at the European Championships, Emma Finucane has carried her searing form into this week’s British Track Championships, where she is now one win away from a clean sweep.

The Olympic gold medallist, who won the team sprint on Friday, returned on Saturday to rule over the keirin, crossing the line at least three bike lengths ahead of her GB team-mates.

The victories come three weeks after Finucane broke the flying 200m record en route to Euros gold in the sprint. “I came in with good form,” she said of this week's Nationals, “and I’ve kind of used that momentum.

“In that [keirin] final, I knew I needed some space, and as long as I put 100% effort in and found that black line, I knew it would be really hard to get round me. That’s pretty much what I did: I picked a point, found the black line, and absolutely sent it. To cross the line first is really, really special.”

Finucane last achieved a clean sweep at the competition in 2023, then 20 years old and riding on her home velodrome in Newport. “To win a National Champs jersey is always special,” she said, after claiming her seventh on Saturday.

Now with a day to go at the championships, both she and her partner Matthew Richardson are looking for one more win each to take a full sprint gold medal haul back to their home in suburban Manchester; Finucane will race the individual sprint on Sunday, while Richardson will race the keirin – both events in which the two are the European champions.

“The triple would be really cool, and hopefully Matty will do the same. He’s pretty unbeatable here,” Finucane said. “[I'm taking it] one race at a time.”

Team sprint overhaul

Richardson’s second title of the championships came in the team sprint, which he won with Marcus Hiley and Harry Radford – a trio that pledged to race together over a game of Fifa a month ago.

In the final, the team were five thousands of a second down at the end of the second lap, before Richardson pulled them a whole second into the green. Their finishing time of 42.478 would have earned them a gold medal and a world record at the London 2012 Olympics.

“I certainly executed better than I thought I would,” Radford said.

After the race, he, Hiley and Richardson swapped their skinsuits for Stockport County shirts, in honour of their team’s 4-2 victory over Wigan in League One. “It’s a shame we missed the game,” Hiley said. “But I guess coming away with a jersey makes it worthwhile in the end.”

Morris and Bostock double up

There were more national titles, too, for Anna Morris and Matthew Bostock, who each earned their second gold medal of the week.

Morris, who won the scratch race on Thursday and placed second in the individual pursuit on Friday, proved the most consistent scorer in the points race, which she won ahead of Josie Knight and Katie Archibald.

The trio were part of a group that gained a lap during the race, and kept pushing each other into the closing sprints. In the end, Morris tallied 44 points, while Knight collected 33 and Archibald 29.

“When you’ve got the calibre of riders like Katie, Josie, Jess [Roberts] and Erin [Boothman], it really elevates the level of the field,” Morris said. “It makes for good, hard racing. That’s what we want, and that’s what we’ve come here to do.”

Bostock’s second victory came in the elimination race, following his scratch race win from Friday. “It’s been the perfect start to the year,” he said.

The 28-year-old, now racing for Rapha’s new RCC Racing team, rejoined the Great Britain Cycling Team squad last April, having been on the Academy as a teenager.

“I always used to wing it a bit [on the track],” he smiled. “But now, with the help of the coaches, I’m starting to actually really understand it.”

Tandem treble

In the para-cycling events, tandem duo Jenny Holl and Sophie Unwin earned their third gold medals, this time with a catch at the halfway point in the 4km pursuit final.

“We went quicker than either of us were expecting to,” said Unwin, who, with Holl, is the world champion in the event. “To be able to race in the rainbow jersey, and to be able to win in the rainbow jersey, is great.”

There were also wins for Crystal Lane-Wright in the C4-5 scratch race, Elisabeth Simpson in the C1-3 scratch race, Alex Jones in the C4-5 kilometre time trial, Fin Graham in the C1-3 kilometre time trial, and Frederick Ireland and Aaron Pope in the men’s tandem sprint.

Billy Cookson likes to think of this week’s British Track Championships as the FA Cup. “You’ve got the best athletes in the world in their discipline, you’ve got world record holders, world champions and European champions… and then you’ve got me,” he smiles.

“I’m like that non-league team that gets a good, little run and gets to show off what they can do – Havant and Waterlooville, a good few years ago, that’s the one that always sticks in my memory.”

Cookson, a 30-year-old management accountant based in London, only began cycling three months ago. He bought the track bike he’s riding at the championships in Manchester six weeks ago from Facebook Marketplace, and he’s so new to riding the rollers, he has to hold onto a rail while he warms up and down.

“When I set out, I said I wanted to ride in the Nationals,” he says. “A few people laughed at me, and I said, ‘No, I’ll ride in the Nationals.’” It’s the same resolve he showed seven years prior, when, after a life-changing car crash, he had to teach himself to use a knife and fork again.

Cookson was 23 when the accident happened. He had travelled to Australia a month earlier, and was ready to start a new chapter of his life as a club cricketer. Then, one day in late October, he hit a bus head-on while driving.

“I broke both my ankles, tibia, fibia, patella, my femur snapped… I punctured both my lungs as well, and split my liver,” he says. “Sorry to be graphic, but my arm was hanging off, my knee and my bone was smashed out of my leg, and my head was nearly taken off – I’ve got a laceration that went from ear to ear,” he continues, lifting up his fringe to show the scar. “I had like a flap on the top of my head.”

Cookson doesn’t remember the air ambulance taking him to the Royal Melbourne Hospital. His only memory of the accident ends five minutes before it happened. The next thing he recalls is waking up from an induced coma six days later, with his parents at the end of the hospital bed.

“That’s when I realised it was quite bad,” he says. “Because I was in Australia, it was at least 24 hours for them to get there.”

At the time, the doctors said Cookson had lost so much blood that he “didn’t have any of his own left in him”. He underwent 28 surgeries, and spent six months in a rehabilitation hospital, regaining his strength and learning how to walk again.

“It was two years before I could pick something up with my hand and let go of it,” he says. “I was great to go for a beer with, because I couldn’t get it to my mouth, and I couldn’t let go – if someone needed me to hold their beer, it wasn’t going in my mouth.”

Cookson chose to stay in Australia after the car crash, and only returned to the UK last March. “This winter, I was twiddling my thumbs – not very well, obviously,” he winks, “– and I thought, ‘What shall I do?’ I could go and sit in the pub and watch football most weekends, or I could actually go and do something. That’s when I thought of track cycling.”

A hobby cyclist when he was younger, Cookson used to take his dad’s old mountain bike for weekend rides, and remembered a few track sessions he did as a 15-year-old. He knew track cycling was a Paralympic sport, but how could he get into it? “I did my accreditation at Lee Valley over four consecutive weeks,” he says, “and I went up to Loughborough to do a Talent ID day [with British Cycling].”

Due to his injuries – Cookson’s right arm has been rebuilt and is now shorter than his left – he received a C5 classification, meaning he competes in the racing category for those with the least severe impairments.

Before he'd even received his Talent ID results, he told the coaches he wanted to race at the upcoming Nationals. “They said, ‘We’ll see. If you go every week, then maybe. But it’s quite a high bar.’” In their reticence, though, he saw an exciting challenge. "I asked for a kit list of the things I'd need," he says.

“People were shocked that that was my first-ever bunch race [on Thursday], because of how I positioned myself and stuff,” he says of the scratch race, in which he finished 12th. On Friday, Cookson was disqualified from the elimination race for riding on the blue band – “I wasn’t familiar with [that rule],” he says. “It’s all learning. I’ll take that on board.”

He then went on to place 8th in the kilometre time trial on Saturday evening, clocking 1:17.248 – a speed of almost 47kph.

With so much experience gained in just three months, Cookson is now thinking to longer-term goals. It's just over two years until the Paralympics in LA – is he aiming for that? “I think I have to,” Cookson says, “because that’s what drives me on the days I don’t want to do things. I think I have to have that as a goal, but it’s not the be-all and end-all.

“If I get to a point where I can only compete at Nationals and be slightly competitive at that, being here this weekend, I’m pretty comfortable with that. That would be a pretty cool thing,” he adds. Still, here’s hoping the magic of the FA Cup continues.

In the El Clásico of individual pursuit finals – world champion vs world record holder – it was the latter, Josie Knight, who won the title at the British Track Championships on Friday night.

Just one second separated the newly crowned European champion and rainbow-jersey-wearer Anna Morris inside the Manchester Velodrome. Morris led for all but the last 250m of the 4km event, at one point by more than two and a half seconds, before Knight clawed it back on the home straight to win with a 4:24.029.

A gasp filled the track centre when the gun sounded and the scoreboard tipped in Knight’s favour. For the second night in a row, the IP world champion had been beaten at this year’s championships, after Charlie Tanfield bettered Josh Charlton on Thursday. Knight was perhaps the last person in the room to realise she’d done it, too.

“I was coming into the straight and I hadn’t heard her gun yet, so I drove all the way to the line, and I really couldn’t tell [who had won],” she told Cycling Weekly. “It took me a half a lap to be like, ‘Oh wait, that’s my name with number one next to it!’”

Knight’s title-winning ride came two weeks after she set a new world record of 4:19.461 at the UEC European Track Championships in Konya, Turkey. She topped the qualifying board at Nationals on Friday morning, nipping Morris by one tenth of a second, to set up an all-star final.

“I could hear the commentators, and for the first six laps – when the pain hasn’t quite got to you yet – I was so aware that they were saying Anna was like 1.5 seconds up,” she said. “With six [laps] to go, I was like, ‘There’s nothing to lose, just empty it all to the line.’ I felt sort of in control of the hurt.

“I’m just over the moon,” the 28-year-old continued. “You can’t really ask for much more than beating the world champion… It’s such a privilege to have such a good race and to race Anna. I hope the crowd realised that that’s as good an IP final as you’ll get anywhere in the world.”

Curiously, Knight competed with the same helmet and wheels that Tanfield rode to victory on Thursday, having gone to his house to borrow them earlier in the morning. She also wore an old European champion's skinsuit belonging track sprinter Emma Finucane, for lack of time to make her own. “The only thing that was mine was my legs and my shoes,” she smiled.

Eighteen-year-old Erin Boothman won the bronze medal in the event, catching her opponent with more than a kilometre to go.

Richardson’s reign continues

Following the individual pursuit final, Matthew Richardson rounded off a peerless display in the sprint competition with a 2-0 victory over 2023 national champion Harry Ledingham-Horn.

Richardson, who beat the 20-time world champion Harrie Lavreysen twice at the European Championships earlier this month, won every heat he contested across Thursday and Friday, at times sitting up with half a lap still to race. He is now a third of the way to defending the clean sweep he managed last year, with the team sprint and keirin still to come.

“I don’t come here to get second. I don’t go anywhere to get second,” Richardson said afterwards.

One person in the media zone likened the sprinter’s dominance to Eusebio’s second-half showing against North Korea at the 1966 World Cup, when he scored four goals, and made his opponents look like schoolboys.

Richardson's tactic, he said, was to “race well, but race smart – I’ve got a pretty big race block this year, and we’re right in the middle of it, so it’s all about making smart decisions and trying to get through races.”

In the women’s team sprint, Olympic champion Emma Finucane combined with her team-mates Rhianna Parris-Smith, Lowri Thomas and Lauren Bell to win the gold medal.

“I was really happy with how we executed the ride,” Finucane said after the final, which she Parris-Smith and Thomas won by a second. “For the first time riding team sprint together, I think it was a solid ride.”

After Parris-Smith’s strong start out the gates, Finucane pulled out a gap to Thomas in the second lap, leaving her Welsh compatriot to charge through and into the victory turn. “There’s only so much you can do when you have the fastest rider in the world in front of you,” Thomas said. “You’ve just got to catch up at the end.”

In the para-cycling events, Archie Atkinson added a C4-5 elimination race title to the scratch race one he won on Thursday. “That’s two for two,” he said. “I’m on a 100% win streak in racing this year, so I’m very happy.”

There were also wins for Matthew Bostock in the men's scratch race, Sophie Unwin and Jenny Holl in the women’s tandem sprint, Chris Latham and Morgan Fice-Noyes in the men’s tandem individual pursuit, Fin Graham in the C1-3 elimination race, Elisabeth Simpson in the C1-3 time trial and Kadeena Cox in the C4-5 time trial.

“It was like somebody had shot him,” says Simon Fletcher, describing the moment his son Lewis crashed on a tarmac BMX track a year and a half ago. First he heard the bang of the fork snapping, then came the sight of the limp body on the floor. “Even now, just remembering…” he continues, catching his throat as he speaks. “We thought the worst.”

Simon was coaching the pump track session when the incident happened. Lewis had ridden the course in Gravesend plenty of times before, but on this run, three quarters of the way round, his bike collapsed beneath him at 45kph, and he barrelled head first into the ground. Within moments, the emergency services turned up in an ambulance and a fire engine – the latter only needed for the most serious call-outs.

“It was so bad they put him to sleep, into a coma, straightaway at the side of the track,” Simon says. Lewis stayed unconscious for three days afterwards. He didn’t leave the intensive care unit at the hospital for two weeks.

Today, Lewis Fletcher is reclining in a plastic chair inside the Manchester Velodrome. He’s just finished qualifying for the individual sprint competition at the British Track Championships, and is giddy to be sharing a track with Team GB riders, let alone to be alive.

He has no memory of the crash that almost ended his life, he says, or any of the six months before it. “They found two bleeds [initially],” the now 18-year-old says. “I was in a coma for three days, and it didn’t get any better. Then they gave me another brain scan, and I had four bleeds – two more bleeds.”

'Cycling saved me'

It took four months before the teenager could return to school. Judged to be at high risk of having a seizure, he was also “banned” from driving for eight months – "I hated that," he says.

“The parts [of my brain that I damaged], were [responsible for] language and emotions,” he says. As such, he struggled with his mental health – “I was depressed for a long time” – and began to have troubles with his speech. “I still do now sometimes,” he says. “I had speech and language therapy. It’s things like, if I had a conversation with you, I’d want to say ‘car’ but I’d say ‘bus’, or I’d want to say ‘bike’ and I’d say ‘car’.”

As time passed, Fletcher returned little by little to cycling. He began by turning his legs slowly on the turbo trainer at home in Dartford, riding until the headaches became so sore he had to stop. Come January 2025, though, just four months after the crash, and he was ready to commit himself again to the bike.

“That’s what saved me,” he says. “I was really, really struggling, then I got on a bike, and I felt back to normal. It’s so hard to explain. I didn’t have emotion, I didn’t feel happy, didn’t feel sad, I was just blunt, so blunt. I got on a bike, and I actually started smiling again.”

Once the fifth-ranked youth BMXer in the world, this time he turned his talent to the velodrome. “I met [my coach] Chris Pyatt, who took me on. Absolute legend, I love that guy,” he says, pointing across to Pyatt in a black polo shirt. “I’ve worked with him now for seven months, and I’ve gone from an 11.3 [seconds] to a 10.3 [in the 200m flying lap].

“I feel like I lost a year of my life – I don’t know about it, but I’m not going to complain. Where I am now, I’m living my dream, racing against riders who have got a GB top on, and opportunities that I want.”

Fletcher is now on a scholarship at the University of Derby. His A-Levels didn’t go to plan – he dropped a subject, had to relearn the syllabus because of the memory loss, and got a C and an E – but the university understood his case, and offered him a place nonetheless. He's studying sport therapy and rehabilitation, which he combines with regular training, and one overarching dream.

“I want to be on GB. That’s my goal,” he says. An arm's reach away, the GB men's sprint squad are warming up in their fenced paddock. Sir Chris Hoy went from BMX racing to track sprint Olympic champion, I say. Fletcher points out that so too did Dutchman Harrie Lavreysen, the now 20-time world champion. Could he have the same destiny? “Fingers crossed,” he smiles.

“I nearly died, so I’m lucky I’m still here. In the next three years, if someone says I’m going to die, I want to be happy. I’m not taking anything for granted.”

Fletcher turns to his dad beside him and reaches out his arm for a high five. “We’re going for the GB squad!” he says excitedly. With his future ahead of him, the crash, on that foggy September evening in Gravesend, suddenly feels a lifetime ago.

It took a “huge” PB and career-best power numbers for Charlie Tanfield to beat the world champion to the individual pursuit title at the British National Track Championships on Thursday evening.

The 29-year-old knocked 1.7 seconds off his personal best when he qualified top with a 4:02.822 inside the Manchester Velodrome. He then carried his form into the final, leading against the national record holder Josh Charlton for more than three quarters of the 4km event, and beating him by over four seconds.

Ahead of the race, photographers flocked to Charlton to capture his first outing in the rainbow bands he won last October. They then found themselves dashing across the track centre to shoot Tanfield, the against-the-odds winner, as he left the boards smiling, applauded by the crowds.

“You can’t race against a better rider than the world champion,” Tanfield told Cycling Weekly afterwards. “I just wanted to come here and do a good ride. I’m so surprised, so surprised. I can’t believe it, to be honest.”

Across the two rides, Tanfield, a previous IP champion in 2018 and 2023, revealed he did “the best power numbers I’ve ever done”. His latest victory came six months after he attempted the Hour Record, but fell short, still setting the seventh furthest distance of all time.

“It helps with your positioning,” he said of his Hour Record training, “and I feel more robust in my second ride and in the back-end of rides. I’m not dropping off as much anymore.

“I think I was sort of stagnating a bit with my training, and after my Hour, I kind of switched things up, and I’m responding quite well to it.”

Seventeen-year-old Leon Atkins won the bronze medal in the event. The teenager will join Lidl-Trek’s academy squad next year.

Morris defends scratch title

Earlier in the evening, the newly crowned European omnium champion Anna Morris defended her national title in the scratch race, trouncing the field with a final-lap dash.

The first attacks came with six laps to go in the 40-lap event, when Team GB’s Josie Knight peeled off the front of the bunch. Morris reacted fastest to close the move down, and did so again four laps later when Jenny Holl and Phoebe Taylor catapulted to the front with two laps remaining.

“I tried to jump on them, did what I could to the line, and luckily that was enough,” Morris, a now six-time national track champion, said.

“It was the most chaotic last six laps I think I’ve raced,” she added. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a scratch race like it, and that’s part of the fun of racing a scratch race: everyone goes in with different tactics.”

Holl and Taylor held the momentum of their attack to place second and third.

Elsewhere on day one of the British Track Championships, para-cyclist Archie Atkinson won the first national title of the event, sprinting to victory in the rainbow bands in the C4-5 scratch race.

There were also new national honours for Crystal Lane-Wright in the women’s C5 elimination race, Elisabeth Simpson in the women's C2 elimination race, Fin Graham in the men's C1-3 scratch race, and the tandem mixed sprint team named ‘Jean Claude Tan Damme’: Sophie Unwin, Jenny Holl, James Ball and Matt Rotherham.

The four-day championships continue on Friday, when double European champion Matthew Richardson will be in action in the sprint. Richardson qualified first in the event on Thursday, as he began his defence of the three titles he won last year.

Fans can stream all the action for free on British Cycling's YouTube channel.

This week’s Lloyds National Track Championships will be broadcast live and free by British Cycling on YouTube.

The four-day event begins on Thursday morning at the Manchester Velodrome, and runs until Sunday afternoon. British Cycling’s YouTube stream will provide live footage of six sessions, two on each of Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

The decision to provide live coverage comes after the governing body put the British National Cyclo-cross Championships behind a paywall last month. Fans had to pay a subscription fee of £2.99 to access the feed, as part of a “pilot initiative” by British Cycling. The National Track Championships are not part of this initiative.

“The Lloyds National Track Championships is always a prestigious and exciting event as riders compete for the much sought after national jersey – a huge honour in anyone’s career, and this year will be no different,” said Jonathan Day, director of events for British Cycling Ventures, in a press release.

“We’re delighted that we will be able to share the joy, tension and thrill of the championships to anyone and everyone, wherever they are. Whether you’re watching from the stands or the sofa, there’s quality on offer as some of the World’s best riders go head-to-head.”

Among the riders on the start list are two-time Olympic champion Katie Archibald, and current Olympic team sprint champions Emma Finucane and Katy Marchant. They will compete alongside a number of their Great Britain Cycling Team squad-mates who impressed at the recent UEC European Track Championships, including Anna Morris, Josie Knight and Matthew Richardson, each of whom won two gold medals in Konya, Turkey.

“The national champion’s jersey is so iconic,” said Finucane ahead of the competition, “and everyone wants to win it, so I’ll really get stuck in and I’m excited for it. It’s been a while since I won a national jersey so I’m really up for it.”

The full schedule of events – which counts 21 championship events, including para-cycling disciplines – is available on the British Cycling website.

British Cycling’s streaming guide for the championships on Youtube is as follows:

Friday 20 February, session one – 11:00
Friday 20 February, session two – 18:00
Saturday 21 February, session one – 11:00
Saturday 21 February, session two – 18:00
Sunday 22 February, session one – 9:00
Sunday 22 February, session two – 16:00

Cycling Weekly will be reporting on all four days of the event from inside the velodrome. Follow our website for racing updates and exclusive interviews.

Great Britain’s Matthew Richardson doubled his tally of UEC European Track Championships titles on Thursday with a perfectly-timed victory in the keirin.

The 26-year-old came from deep in the final, and after the Netherlands’ Harrie Lavreysen attacked from the gun, surged his way through the group over the three laps to win with a dramatic bike throw.

The victory marked a second in as many days for Richardson, who was competing in his first European Championships after changing racing nationality from Australia in 2024. On Wednesday, he won the individual sprint against Lavreysen, ending the Olympic champion’s seven-year unbeaten streak in the event at major championships.

“To me, it was really important to win the keirin today and get the second jersey,” Richardson said. “Obviously to be able to wear it for the entire year, but also to back up my performance from yesterday [winning the sprint].

“To me, that was really important to show that I do have the legs and that I’m here to stay.”

Top of the table

Great Britain closed this year’s European Track Championships as the runaway medal table winners. The squad collected 13 medals over the five days in Konya, Turkey, including seven gold, four silver and two bronze.

British riders also claimed three world records; Emma Finucane set a new benchmark in the flying 200m, the team pursuit squad broke the world record twice on their way to victory, and Josie Knight became the first woman in history to go sub-4:20 in the individual pursuit.

Reflecting on the squad’s performance, Stephen Park, performance director for the Great Britain Cycling Team, commended an “incredibly dominant week”.

“As we look forward to LA 2028 [the Olympics], with that mix of existing riders and some more to drop back into the team, and up and coming riders looking to fill those ranks, the future looks bright to Los Angeles,” Park said.

Elsewhere on the final day of competition, Lotte Kopecky (Belgium) earned her third European title of the week, this time in the Madison alongside Shari Bossuyt. The British pairing of Anna Morris and Katie Archibald claimed silver.

There were also new Madison titles for Moritz Augenstein and Roger Kluge (Germany), the latter on his 40th birthday. Meanwhile, Alina Lysenko, a Russian athlete racing under a neutral flag, won the women’s keirin.

Great Britain’s Josie Knight claimed her second world record of the week on Wednesday en route to victory in the individual pursuit at the UEC European Track Championships.

The 28-year-old, who was also part of the world-record-breaking British team pursuit squad on Monday, took a staggering 4.181 seconds off the individual benchmark in qualifying, becoming the first woman in history to go below 4:20 with her time of 4:19.461.

Knight then went on to beat the Netherlands’ Mischa Bredewold in the gold medal final on Wednesday evening.

“I thought it was possible to maybe break the world record, but I never expected it would be possible to do a sub-4:20, so I’m very happy,” Knight said afterwards.

The record previously belonged to Italian Vittoria Bussi, who went 4:23.624 at a specially organised event in Aguascalientes, Mexico, last year. The women’s individual pursuit world record was broken nine times in 2025 after the UCI increased the event distance from 3km to 4km.

“I raced the 4km distance for the first time at the World Championships and I didn’t pace it very well and I wasn’t very happy,” Knight said. “From that moment, I was fully focused on this race here in Konya today, so I’m really happy to have done a good performance.”

Knight's GB team-mate Millie Couzens won the bronze medal.

Richardson topples Lavreysen

Later in the evening at the competition in Turkey, British sprinter Matthew Richardson pulled off a rare and convincing sprint victory over 20-time world champion Harrie Lavreysen.

In the final, the Dutchman won the first match-up of a best of three, before Richardson overhauled him, sealing the decider by more than a bike length. The moment brought Richardson’s first European title since he swapped nationality from Australia in 2024, and Lavreysen’s first individual sprint defeat at a major championships since 2019.

“It was a really hard fought battle,” Richardson said afterwards. “I’ve been working and trying to beat Harrie for many, many years, and always fell a little bit short, so it’s really satisfying to finally get on that top step.

“Hopefully it was an exciting final for the people watching at home. I certainly enjoyed myself.”

Elsewhere on day four of the European Championships, Mathilde Gros (France) won the women’s kilometre time trial, Iúri Leitão (Portugal) claimed victory in the men’s omnium, and Lotte Kopecky (Belgium) won the women’s points race.

Great Britain head into Thursday’s final day as the runaway leaders in the medal standings with 11 medals, of which six gold. The next best nation, Belgium, has three golds.

Emma Finucane and Anna Morris doubled Great Britain’s gold medal tally at the European Track Championships on Tuesday with victories in the women’s sprint and omnium.

Finucane, who qualified top with a flying 200m world record on Monday, won every race she competed in, beating her GB team-mate, and fellow Olympic gold medallist, Sophie Capewell 2-0 in Tuesday’s final.

Throughout the day, Morris commanded over the four-event omnium competition, scoring highly in the scratch and elimination races, and winning the tempo race, to go into the final points race tied with Belgium’s Shari Bossuyt. The individual pursuit world champion then won four out of the eight sprints to claim gold with 132 points.

Morris was also part of the British women’s team pursuit squad that broke the world record twice on Monday on their way to the European title. Great Britain’s first gold medal of the championships came courtesy of Joe Truman in the kilometre time trial.

Speaking after her sprint victory, Finucane, a three-time world champion, said: “Yesterday I wanted to execute my ride perfectly, and I did; I came away with a world record and I couldn’t believe it. But it doesn’t finish there, you still have to race races, and the girls were really fast; there was lots of fast sprinting and to come away with this medal and this jersey means so, so much to me.”

Morris, too, reflected on a “really tough” day of racing in the omnium.

“[Norway's Anita] Stenberg and Bossuyt made the race really hard and the points race was difficult to navigate but I worked hard to score the points and seal the race there at the end,” she said.

“The European jersey is really special, especially in an event like the omnium, so I’m really happy and proud to be taking this back home.”

With two days of competition remaining in Konya, Turkey, Great Britain currently sit top of the medals table with eight medals. In addition to the four golds, the squad has collected silvers in both the men’s and women’s team sprint, as well as the women’s sprint, and a bronze in the men’s team pursuit.

The men’s and women’s team pursuit world records were both broken on Monday at the UEC European Track Championships.

Twice the Great Britain women’s quartet of Katie Archibald, Millie Couzens, Josie Knight and Anna Morris bettered a benchmark in the 4km event that had stood since 2021. Their time of 4:03.634 in the first round took more than six tenths of a second off the previous record. They then won the gold medal later in the evening with an even faster 4:02.808 in their final against Germany, the former world record holders.

Also in the first round, the Danish men became the first quartet in history to break the 3:40 barrier with their time of 3:39.977. The team of Tobias Hansen, Frederik Rodenberg, Rasmus Pedersen and Lasse Norman Leth, the reigning world champions, also went on to win the title, beating Switzerland.

The men's record was previously held by Australia, who clocked 3:40.730 at the Paris Olympics in 2024.

In total, there were four record-breaking rides in Konya, Turkey, on a remarkable second day of the competition.

In qualifying for the individual sprint, British track sprinter Emma Finucane broke the world record in the flying 200m, beating the previous benchmark by more than two tenths of a second with a time of 9.759 seconds.

“People know that I wanted to break a world record. I think every girl coming into this competition wanted to take the opportunity, too,” Finuncane said afterwards. “To look at the board and see 9.7 and break a world record is unbelievable. I actually can’t believe it.”

The track in Konya, opened in 2022, is located at 1,200m above sea level, an altitude that lowers the air density, which in turn reduces aerodynamic drag. It is also wider and steeper than other tracks, with longer transitions in the corners, which can help 'slingshot' riders.

Elsewhere on Monday, Joe Truman (Great Britain) won his first international championship gold medal in the one-kilometre time trial. The 28-year-old qualified third in the event, before clocking the competition’s fastest time – 57.541 seconds – in the final.

Lotte Kopecky (Belgium) won her seventh Europeans gold medal, and her fourth in the elimination race, while Tim Torn Teutenberg (Germany) won the men’s points race.

On Tuesday, Finucane will face Alina Lysenko (neutral athlete) in the semifinals of the women’s sprint competition. The Brit’s compatriot and Olympic gold medal-winning team-mate Sophie Capewell will ride against Lea Sophie Friedrich (Germany).

British track sprinter Emma Finucane broke the flying 200m world record by more than two tenths of a second on Monday morning.

The 23-year-old, an Olympic champion and three-time world champion, clocked a time of 9.759 seconds in qualifying for the individual sprint at the UEC European Track Championships in Konya, Turkey. She became only the third woman in history to go under 10 seconds in the event, doing so with an average speed was 73.78kph (45.84mph)

The previous women’s world record was held by China’s Yuan Liying, who recorded a 9.976 last March at the same velodrome in Konya. The track, located at 1,200m above sea level, is wider and steeper than others, and is where Matthew Richardson set the men’s world record at 8.857 seconds last August.

“People know that I wanted to break a world record. I think every girl coming into this competition wanted to take the opportunity, too,” Finuncane said afterwards.

“I was really nervous to execute the perfect ride. I think I pretty much went out there and did everything I think I could possibly perfectly. To come away, to look at the board and see 9.7 and break a world record is unbelievable. I actually can’t believe it.”

Earlier on Monday morning, Finucane's GB team-mate Sophie Capewell came within six hundredths of a second of Liying’s benchmark as the second woman ever to go sub-10.

Capewell won a silver medal on Sunday in the team sprint, an event Finucane chose to skip in order to focus on the flying 200m world record and individual sprint competition.

“I’ve seen on Instagram that a few girls are going to try and do it,” the 23-year-old told Cycling Weekly last month. “I saw Lea [Sophie Freidrich, former flying 200m world record holder] put something on Instagram like, ‘Watch this space.’ Then obviously Hetty [van de Wouw]. There are a few girls eyeing up this sub-10. Obviously Yuan [Liying] has already done it, so I think let’s just see where that record can go. That’s a goal of mine.”

Freidrich finished third in qualifying with a time of 10.010 seconds, while Van de Wouw placed sixth with 10.120.

Following Finucane’s successful attempt, the organiser of the European Championships, the UEC, wrote on social media: “History rewritten in Konya.”

British Cycling posted on Instagram: “Konya believe it! Emma Finucane knocks nearly a quarter of a second off the women’s flying 200m time-trial record with a time of 9.759.”

Finucane now holds two world records, having set the team sprint benchmark alongside Capewell and Katy Marchant with their gold medal-winning ride at the Paris Olympics in 2024.

Both Finucane and Capewell will compete in the individual sprint finals later on Monday afternoon as the top two seeded riders.

Yuli van der Molen had only been home for 20 minutes when the doctor rang and told her to come back to the hospital. The scan results would typically take a week – but hers were urgent, the doctor could tell that at first glance.

It was a cold day in January 2024, and Van der Molen, just 20 at the time, rushed back with her parents. She remembers the diagnosis hitting hard: the doctor explained she had Hodgkin lymphoma, a rare type of blood cancer that affects the body’s lymphatic system, the network of vessels, nodes and organs that form part of the wider immune system. It was stage four – the most advanced.

“I just froze,” the Dutchwoman, a road and track rider from the outskirts of Amsterdam, says. “Then you go into survival mode. I cried a lot. You just go into your own bubble. Hodgkin’s is [one of] the most treatable [types of] cancer – that’s what they told me – but I still needed chemo, and I still needed to lose my hair, and go through that horrible,” her voice trails off, her eyes welling up. “I’m thinking back now to the moment, and I just froze.”

Almost two years on, the memory is still raw. Van der Molen is sitting on a plastic folding chair at the end of a long corridor at London’s Lee Valley Velodrome. It’s the second night of the London 3 Day track competition, and the now 22-year-old is clutching her right arm, having crashed hard in a race two hours before. The dull ache, she says, is nothing compared to what she’s been through.

It was February 2023, almost a year before the diagnosis, when Van der Molen felt the first symptoms. Riding for AG Insurance-NXTG’s under-23 team, she noticed an unusual lack of power in her right leg while at a training camp. Then came the tiredness and restless nights, stricken with throbbing pain and bouts of sweating.

“I never told my parents how bad it really was,” she says. “I went to the hospital a couple of times because, in the middle of the night, I woke up with a lot of pain, crying.” She gestures to her lower back, the source of the agony, and then points to her groin. “Your lymph nodes stop here, so the pain stopped here,” she says. “Someone said, ‘Maybe it’s a hernia.’ Another person said I needed to stretch more. But that wasn’t the problem. Deep down, I thought there was something really wrong with me, but I didn’t know what.”

Training and racing remained a challenge throughout the 2023 season. Of the 27 road race days Van der Molen started that year, she failed to finish 10, and only broke into the top 30 once. Then, in December, she noticed something strange.

“I was feeling here, my collarbone, and I felt a lump. I was like, ‘Shit, what’s this?’” It jogged a memory: more than 20 years before, her mother had experienced the same, and was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a similar form of the cancer. “I googled it, saw it was cancer and thought, I think I have that. I went to the doctor, took my shirt off, and she was like,” Van der Molen throws her head back with a wide-eyed look, imitating the doctor’s reaction upon seeing the lump. “That was the morning of the Nationals on the track,” she says. Later that afternoon, she raced and came third in the Madison, before being dropped in the qualifying rounds the next day.

The new year, 2024, began with hospital appointments, blood tests, and eventually the scan that explained everything. When the doctor told Van der Molen she would need chemotherapy, she replied that it wouldn’t be possible: she had a training camp coming up. The reality soon sunk in, however, and her first round was scheduled for Valentine’s Day, less than a month after her diagnosis. The treatment would come in three-day blocks, and she would have to undergo four cycles.

“It was a big room with a lot of beds,” she remembers of the first round. “They put all the bags on the bed, and I was like, OK, that’s all going into my body? At first everything is new, so you don’t feel anything. You’re just thinking, ‘What the f**k? Is this really happening to me?’”

With the help of her mother, Esther, the 20-year-old vlogged the next four months and uploaded the videos to YouTube – the most popular has been viewed more than 11,000 times. The early vlogs showed her diagnosis, rounds of chemo, and the moment she shaved her head in the living room. In one video, Van der Molen injects medicine into her abdomen, before breaking down and crying for five minutes while the camera keeps rolling. Such moments are hard to watch, but optimism is never far away; there’s joy as she tries on wigs, and celebrations as she wears a T-shirt that reads “it’s my last day of chemo”. On 14 May 2024, Van der Molen uploaded a 20-minute vlog set in a lively bar, with pink balloons, a photobooth, and dancing. The video is titled ‘surprise party cancer-free’.

Today, Van der Molen’s YouTube channel stands as a diary of the most harrowing period of her life. How does she feel looking back at the videos? “At first I couldn’t really watch myself,” she says. “Now I can watch and I think, I’m really proud of the person that I am now. I never wanted to have cancer, but cancer made me the person I am today, in a good way. But it sucks that I had to go through it.”

Van der Molen restarted training just weeks after her last round of chemo, determined not to lose any more time in her career. She returned to road racing four months later, at a one-day event in Belgium, but it was too soon – she did not reach the finish line.

The thing with chemo, she says, is that it “destroys a lot”; her energy was drained, her racing motor had vanished, and her stomach was sore from the medicine. She waited until October to begin working with a coach again. She then competed on the track at the Six Days of Rotterdam, and won twice – “that was quite nice and unexpected,” she says. But regaining fitness wouldn’t be the only challenge in her recovery.

“In January, I started having really bad panic attacks,” Van der Molen says. The first one came in Spain, where she had travelled for a month’s warm-weather training. “For the first time, I was away from home again, and the fear of having cancer and never [returning to] being a good rider killed me. I just blocked,” she says. “At first, I didn’t want help because I thought I could make it [go away] myself. But the fear of cancer was every day.”

Van der Molen soon began working with psychologists, and was selected to represent the Netherlands at the under-23 European Track Championships that summer. “The training went really badly and I didn’t want to go anymore because I was so bad,” she says.

The competition would end up yielding the proudest moment of her comeback; she placed fourth in the elimination race, a result that proved her endurance was returning, and then won a silver medal in the Madison with teammate Lisa van Belle. “My family was there, so I was happy to have that moment with my mum and my grandma,” she says, adding with a smile: “I will never show it to my parents, but, in the end, it made me quite emotional.”

Van der Molen’s arms are now decorated with subtle tattoos; on the inside of her right wrist is the word ‘survivor’ in block capitals, while another tattoo, higher up on her left arm, says ‘never give up’. They’re indelible reminders of what she has been through, and the person she has become. “I always say there’s an older version of me, a cancer version, and now a new version of me,” she says. How would she describe that new version? “It’s just different. I can’t really describe what’s different. My mum said that I’m maybe more grown up.”

Two years on, Van der Molen’s cancer is in remission. The fear it may return remains – “I think it’s never going to go away,” she says – but it’s a worry gradually receding as it is outshone by the 22–year-old’s excitement about new opportunities. This season marks a fresh start with British Continental team O’Shea RedChilli Bikes, alongside her increasingly secure place in the Dutch national track squad.

“I will maybe never be a big winner or a big name,” Van der Molen says, but there’s no hint of bitterness in her voice. Two years ago, the future was measured in the intervals between hospital appointments. Today, it is measured in training blocks and target races.

Family view: Niki Terpstra

Yuli van der Molen’s uncle is retired pro Niki Terpstra, a former winner of Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders.

The 41-year-old has supported his niece with advice throughout her career. Keen to help out after her diagnosis, Terpstra volunteered last summer at a charity day for Dutch foundation Lymph&Co, where he auctioned off a cycling masterclass. The money raised contributed to the day’s total of more than €77,000. “I didn’t do too much,” Terpstra insists. “I think it’s normal to help your family, but it’s also a good charity.”

Terpstra was also there for Van der Molen’s first track race back, which came just months after her last chemo session in 2024, at an event he helped organise in Alkmaar. What was it like seeing her racing again? “I wouldn’t say emotional, but a little bit,” he says. “It’s exciting to see somebody who was suffering for a while recovering that well and being back in competition.

“Of course, the comeback is going with ups and downs; she’s making two steps forward and one step back, and now she’s made two steps forward with the track season [Van der Molen won the Dutch Derny Championships in November - ed.]. It’s actually incredible.”

Has Terpstra noticed any changes in his niece over the last two years? “I think her character changed,” he says. “I think she’s more willing to suffer at the moment, for her sport. She suffered enough, so the suffering she does now looks like a small effort.”

This feature originally appeared in Cycling Weekly magazine on 8th January 2026. Subscribe now and never miss an issue.

American cyclist Chloé Dygert (Canyon–SRAM Zondacrypto)has launched a fundraising campaign to help former teammate and decorated track cyclist Sarah Hammer-Kroening, who faces a series of severe medical complications, mounting medical bills and an uncertain road ahead.

Dygert, a celebrated cyclist in her own right, announced the fundraiser on behalf of Hammer-Kroening, describing her longtime friend as "strong, independent, deeply proud, and a devoted mother" who would "never ask for help like this herself, even when she truly needs it."

Hammer-Kroening, widely regarded as one of the most accomplished track cyclists in U.S. history, is a four-time Olympic medalist and an eight-time world champion. She competed in three Olympic Games (2008, 2012, 2016) and was a cornerstone of Team USA’s success in the team pursuit. Dygert and Hammer-Kroening became close during the buildup to the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, which were Hammer’s final Games and Dygert’s first. Dygert described Hammer-Kroening as a "big sister, steady, protective, and always looking out for me."

Since retiring from elite competition in September 2017, Hammer-Kroening has continued to serve the sport as a coach and the Associate Director of High Performance for the paralympic cycling program.

According to Dygert, Hammer-Kroening’s health issues began suddenly on May 14, 2025, when she experienced "severe and uncontrollable pain in her left arm." The following morning, she was rushed to the emergency department and ultimately life-flighted for emergency vascular surgery.

In an effort to save her arm, Hammer-Kroening underwent five surgeries in four days. These were successful, but complications are ongoing.

Dygert reports that Hammer-Kroening has undergone seven surgeries thus far, with at least one more still ahead. Complications from the procedures led to paralysis of her diaphragm, significantly affecting her breathing. As a result, she requires supplemental oxygen for much of the day and continues to undergo medical treatment, care and rehabilitation.

Hammer-Kroening has not made any public statements about her condition, but Dygert reveals that it's been "a long and exhausting road."

Beyond the physical toll, the financial burden has been heavy. Dygert notes that the medical care required throughout 2025 has resulted in "a significant and overwhelming amount of medical bills, many of which remain outstanding." Hammer-Kroeningis also facing the possibility of another surgery in 2026, a procedure that has been denied by insurance and is currently under appeal.

"She must be prepared for the possibility of moving forward with surgery out of pocket if approval does not come in time. Managing existing medical bills while preparing for potential future costs has created an enormous financial strain," Dygert says.

"She would never ask for financial support herself, which is why I am doing it for her. This is not about charity. It is about community, compassion, and stepping in when someone who has always carried herself with quiet strength needs support. She has spent her life taking care of others. Right now, I want to make sure she feels that same care coming back to her."

Funds raised will go toward medical bills and surgical expenses from 2025 as well as the anticipated medical and surgical costs in 2026. The fundraising goal is $55,000, and the campaign is hosted on GoFundMe.

“Any support helps,” Dygert said. “And if you are not in a position to donate, simply sharing this page means more than you know.”

No racing season retrospective would be complete without pausing to contemplate the doings and undoings of our overlords at the Union Cyclists Internationale. From their lofty perch in Switzerland they have issued edicts ranging from the ingenious to the hilarious.

Ruling over races big and small, from the Tour de France to your local crit, they have made decisions that explored the boundaries of ethics, logic and even physics. It’s time to cast an eye over a few highlights of the UCI’s year.

MISS: Wider bars to slow us down

On the assumption that one of the things making road racing progressively more dangerous is speed, the UCI has decided it’s time to make everyone a bit less quick. From January 2027, bars will need to be at least 40cm wide, with limits on the amount of flare between the tops and the drops and for the turn-in of the brake hoods.

The idea is that if they make everyone less aerodynamic with a wider arm position, they’ll be slower – which is not in itself a daft idea. In recent years, many pros have moved to narrower bars, typically 36-38cm. Shifting to 40cm, a pretty wide bar by modern standards, is a little difficult, especially if you’re a smaller female rider.

It’s also going to slow down small riders more than big riders (think about the body proportions), although maybe anything we can do to keep a lid on Tadej Pogačar and Remco Evenepoel is welcome. The other problem with it is that it’s not going to slow things down very much.

MISS: GPS trackers for rider safety

Another safety initiative is the introduction of GPS trackers on bikes so that officials are better able to keep track of where riders are, and above all, ensure there’s never a repeat of the fatal incident at the 2024 Worlds where Swiss rider Muriel Furrer crashed unnoticed and wasn’t found for more than 45 minutes.

Unfortunately an attempt to trial the technology at the Tour de Romandie Féminin turned to farce. Five of the teams said they hadn’t been consulted about the trackers, and pointed out that despite trackers being fitted by the UCI, any incidents or injuries they might cause would be deemed the fault of the team, and refused to nominate a rider for the trial.

The UCI retaliated by rather sulkily saying the teams were only reacting like that because they had commercial interests in a different GPS tracking solution.

The upshot? A standoff culminated in the five teams being thrown off the race, a solution that pleased no one. (Except weirdly obsessed UCI-watchers, obviously.)

MISS: Losing track of time in Spain

At the Spanish time trial championships, the timing went seriously awry. Forty minutes after the race finished, riders were still standing around at the line trying to find out the results. Eventually the commissaires issued some times, then changed some of them, then declared Caja Rural-Seguros’s Abel Balderstone the winner with a time that may, or may not, have been firmly rooted in reality.

On the upside, at least it gave Spain’s least Spanish-sounding pro rider the biggest win of his career to date.

MISS: Miscounted Madison points

If you’ve ever watched a Madison race and wondered how on Earth the commissaires keep track of the chaos, well, they don’t always. At the World Championships in October, the German pair of Roger Kluge and Moritz Augenstein let the Danish team escape to take 10 points at the final sprint, on the basis that, as the Germans could clearly see on the stadium scoreboard, they were comfortably ahead of the Danes for the bronze medal.

Except that the Danes had taken a lap mid race, collecting 20 points that somehow the commissaires didn’t get round to adding to the scoreboard until after the finish, putting the Danes on the podium and the Germans in a state of high dudgeon.

MISS: Gear restrictions to slow us down

Another safety initiative dreamed up in 2025 was a maximum gear size for road races. The idea being that if the biggest gear a rider could use was limited to 54x11, it would prevent some of the higher speeds seen in sprints and on descents.

There were a number of problems with this idea. The first was the possibility that the sneaky, sneaky bike riders would circumvent the restriction by pedalling a little faster. The second was the already very limited amount of time riders spend using their highest gear. The third was that the laws of physics mean that even if you ignore all of that, the reduction in speed is still very small.

The fourth problem was a predictable restraint-of-trade lawsuit from SRAM, whose top-tier groupset has been effectively outlawed by the proposed regulation. This saw the rule overturned by a Belgian court before we even got the chance to see it in action and say, “We told you so.”

MISS: Managing protests

The situation in Gaza produced numerous protests around bike races all season, mainly focussed on the presence of the Israel-Premier Tech team. The protests were most prominent at the Vuelta a España in August and September.

With officials unwilling or unable to change the race route or provide increased security, and equally unwilling to eject Israel-Premier Tech from the event as demanded by both the protesters and Spanish politicians, the result was a badly compromised race of abandoned stages, neutralised racing, and risks to riders of all teams from protesters on the course.

The race did at least culminate with a strangely wonderful podium ceremony. After the official finish of the final stage was abandoned, Tom Pidcock’s mum suggested building a podium in a hotel carpark using some team drinks-coolers and a hastily strung-up backdrop. It was probably the most memorable prize presentation in the race’s history.

MISS: Ambiguity over ketones

Ketone esters are made by the human liver when the body is starved of glycogen, and is used as an alternative fuel source. For some time now there’s been a debate about whether taking ketones in a drink would make you faster. The anecdotal reports from bike riders who’ve tried it range from “No difference at all” to “Even better than doping”. Scientific studies have tended very much towards the former.

The UCI took its time to weigh in. After several seasons of deliberation, it finally announced that it wasn’t planning to propose a ban on ketones on the basis that firstly they’re not dangerous, and secondly there’s no evidence they work anyway.

Strangely it then went on to say, “The UCI does not recommend the inclusion of such supplements in riders’ nutritional plans.” You might like to think of ketones as the first item on the “slightly looked down upon” list. You can use them if you want, but the UCI will judge you for it.

MISS: The DQ of Jan-Willem van Schip

The UCI has a history of taking innovations badly, and doubly so with matters of riding positions. When serial UCI penalty-magnet Jan-Willem van Schip of the Park Hotel Valkenberg team clipped off the front of the bunch on stage one of the Tour of Holland, his radical bike attracted a lot of attention. With a very long, upward sloping stem and minimum width bars, he was able to drop into almost a time-trial position with his head tucked behind his hands.

Van Schip had been using the bike and position for some time, and the commissaires at the race didn’t even blink. But word came from UCI officials in Switzerland who’d been watching the coverage, and they didn’t like it. Van Schip was disqualified from the race.

Strangely, it took nearly 24 hours for anyone to clearly explain why. When they did, it had nothing to do with the riding position, which was unconventional but it turned out didn’t actually break any rules. (We’re guessing they looked very, very closely.) It was because his bike’s seat post hadn’t been correctly registered with the UCI technical committee. Which, from the UCI’s point of view, was possibly a bit lucky.

MISS: Tardy bike-checking

Commissaires carry out dimension checks on time trial bikes immediately before every race. At the Vuelta Femenina, when Movistar arrived a few minutes late at the pre-start check for the team time trial, the whole system descended into chaos.

As the sole official on duty tried to get seven Movistar bike through the check before their start time, other teams started to queue up. Movistar just about beat the start clock to get down the ramp on time, with a couple of riders starting late and chasing on.

All of Uno-X Mobility started seven seconds late after waiting to get their bikes returned. Visma-Lease a Bike only just made it to the start with five riders, with two late starters including Imogen Wolff, who joined the course from the barriers before time trialling through the race vehicles as she attempted (and failed) to catch her teammates.

The UCI acknowledged that “mistakes had been made”, fined Movistar €1,600, and declined to offer any respite to the affected teams and riders. Wolff lost over a minute, but maybe the commissaires felt she wasn’t going to win the Vuelta anyway.

Hits of the year

Sadly there isn’t space to cover the UCI’s (no doubt numerous) hits of the year, nor the various race motos that caused crashes, nor the non-race vehicles that blundered onto the course, nor the unpredictable delights of the new yellow-card system, nor time trial helmets in road races, nor indeed the stage of Itzula Basque where Romain Gregoire was awarded second place, then first, then second again.

But rest assured there’ll be plenty more of the same sort of thing in 2026. It’s perhaps the only thing about the coming season that we can be sure of.

This feature originally appeared in Cycling Weekly magazine on 18 December 2025. Subscribe now and never miss an issue.

Great Britain’s Olympic track cyclists dominated at the Tissot Track Cycling Challenge in Switzerland over the weekend, where they earned 18 medals, of which 11 gold.

The squad ruled in particular over the women’s events, winning every elite final on both the endurance and sprint sides.

Among the standout riders was Anna Morris, the current world, European and national individual pursuit champion, who claimed four victories inside the velodrome in Grenchen over the two-day event: the scratch race, points race, omnium and Madison alongside Katie Archibald.

The 30-year-old wrote on Instagram afterwards that it was a “pretty exciting life moment” to race and win alongside Archibald, and hailed the “clean sweep” she helped the Brits achieve across all the women’s races.

In the sprint events, it was Sophie Capewell who led the supremacy. The Olympic team sprint champion, who decided to sit out of racing for much of the year to recover after last summer’s Games, won both the individual sprint and keirin competitions, guiding a British 1-2-3 in the latter, ahead of Lowri Thomas and Lauren Bell.

“First international in a while after a long break from racing,” Capewell wrote on Instagram. “A couple of wins, good learnings, and back building race rhythm.”

There were also braces of victories for Ollie Wood in the men’s points race and omnium, and Ethan Vernon in the elimination race and Madison.

Vernon rode in the Madison alongside his NSN Cycling road teammate Lewis Askey, a former junior national champion in the event, who returned to the track for the first time in six years.

The Tissot Track Cycling Challenge is an official UCI event that carries a Class 1 licence, making it higher-ranked than National Championships, but less so than World or Continental Championships, or the various UCI Nations Cups.

GB’s medal haul of 18 vastly overshadowed the rest of the competition; the next best nation was France, with four medals and only one gold.

The full list of GB’s medal winners from the 2025 Tissot Track Cycling Challenge is below. The squad did not take any male sprinters to the competition in Switzerland; some recently spent time on a training camp in Lanzarote, while others, including Matthew Richardson, competed at the recent Six Days of Rotterdam.

GB medal winners

GOLD

Men’s elimination race – Ethan Vernon
Men’s Madison – Lewis Askey and Ethan Vernon
Men’s omnium – Ollie Wood
Men’s points race – Ollie Wood
Women’s elimination race – Katie Archibald
Women’s keirin – Sophie Capewell
Women’s Madison – Katie Archibald and Anna Morris
Women’s omnium – Anna Morris
Women’s points race – Anna Morris
Women’s scratch race – Anna Morris
Women’s sprint – Sophie Capewell

SILVER

Men’s Madison – Matthew Bostock and Ollie Wood
Women’s keirin – Lowri Thomas
Women’s points race – Katie Archibald
Women’s sprint – Lowri Thomas

BRONZE

Men’s elimination race – Lewis Askey
Men’s scratch race – Lewis Askey
Women’s keirin – Lauren Bell

Pete Mitchell also won silver in the men’s keirin representing Scotland.

Forget wood, concrete or asphalt, the world’s first aluminium velodrome has officially been unveiled in Tucson, Arizona.

The open-air track, which took 26 months to construct, is built to Olympic standards, measuring 250m and with a 42-degree banking.

Its unique material was chosen to withstand the hot temperatures of the Arizona desert, where it can exceed 100°F (38°C) during the summer. Aluminium is highly durable, weather-resistant, and unlikely to suffer surface degradation, such as cracking or warping, in the heat.

“It’s a little bit otherworldly. It’s very satisfying,” Douglas Lowell, one of the velodrome’s builders, told 13 News during a ribbon cutting ceremony on Wednesday.

“It makes for a wonderful ride. It’s very smooth in a unique way for a 42-degree Olympic-type track.”

Tucson’s new velodrome is now one of five 250m tracks in the United States. The other four are located in Erie, Colorado; Rock Hill, South Carolina; Carson, California; and Los Angeles, where the Olympics will be held in 2028.

The project is said to have cost $5 million, and was funded by private donations. It is situated on a plot by the Musselman Honda Circuit, a go-kart track southeast of Tucson.

Masters track rider Karl Baumgart was one of the first people to ride on the aluminium velodrome. Also speaking to 13 News, he said: “I’ve been lucky enough to be on some world-class tracks, you know, travelling the globe, and this track is up there with the best of them.”

Tucson’s velodrome was designed by Canadian Peter Junek, who has worked in the industry since 1990 and has helped create more than 30 tracks around the world, including the high-altitude velodrome in Aguascalientes, Mexico, a rider favourite for record-setting.

A media release from Tucson Velodrome Inc., the group behind the project, read: "In addition to attracting professional and Olympic-class athletes to Tucson for training and racing activities, the velodrome will be a controlled place for all cyclists to ride, promoting health and fitness.

"Youth and school programs will be held to introduce youngsters to the community of cycling, allowing them to enjoy riding bicycles in a safe facility with trained and certified coaches and instructors."

How can you break a record if you don’t know what the benchmark is? That’s the question that sparked a social media investigation this week, after Katie Archibald and Sophie Lewis were declared the new world record holders in the Madison Kilo at the London 3 Day, a fact that now appears to be untrue.

The Madison Kilo, or 1km Madison Time Trial, involves two riders completing a timed kilometre around the track. They’re allowed a few laps to get up to speed, before starting the four-lap effort with a Madison handsling, propelling one rider to attack two laps and then handsling in the other for the remaining two.

The men’s record stands at 53.553 seconds, set by Ed Clancy and Jon Mould in 2018. The women’s? There wasn’t one, it was thought, until last Friday.

As the Madison Kilo is not a championship event – it previously came among the fun of the now defunct Revolution Series – the UCI keeps no trace of the record. Instead, track cycling followers refer to Wikipedia’s ‘List of world records in track cycling’, where the women’s Madison Kilo is absent.

And so, it was presumed that Archibald and Lewis’s time of 1:00.081, set at London’s Lee Valley Velodrome on Friday night, was the new benchmark. The fans in the stands congratulated the pair, so too did Carlton Kirby on the live feed, and the racing continued.

Four days later, though, Archibald cast doubt over what she called her and Lewis’s “sort of” record on Instagram.

“Apparently this weekend was the first time a women’s Mad-Kilo time has been written down,” the two-time Olympic champion wrote, and recalled a time she and Laura Kenny attempted the same event at the Revolution Series, which stopped in 2018. “(Seemingly) any documentation of the times has been lost,” Archibald wrote.

Dutch former pro Kirsten Wild, a nine-time track world champion, then contacted Archibald. “Remember I did it with Dani [Rowe],” Wild said. “Me and Dani were fast, or at least felt fast.”

After the conversation was shared on Instagram, one fan dug up an old Revolution Series Facebook post that declared, on 6 January 2018, that Wild and Rowe had indeed completed a Madison Kilo, and in 59.564 seconds – more than four tenths of a second faster than Archibald and Lewis’s time seven years later.

Is this the world record? It could be. But there's still a feeling a faster time might exist, one that went unrecorded, and is now floating in the history-book ether, waiting to be remembered.

“I’m convinced we could have gone sub 60 [seconds] with some practice,” Archibald said of her and Lewis’s effort. “Maybe next year. In the meantime, can someone write it down this time?”

Are you aware of a faster women's Madison Kilo than 59.564 seconds? Let us know in the comments, or send us an email at cycling@futurenet.com.

The new Colnago T1Rs is here. The Italian brand’s new track frame claims to be more aerodynamic, stiffer, versatile, and feature a geometry that makes it suitable for bunch races, individual events, and sprinting.

Its the first dedicated Colnago track bike since the K-One, which was last used in around 2018; the Italian brand does not currently supply a big nation with their velodrome machines.

Its release comes off the back of Colnago bikes being a somewhat dominant force on the road and time trials in the hands of UAE Team Emirates-XRG, UAE Team ADQ, and most dominantly in the hands of Tadej Pogačar.

The T1Rs has been designed with one sole purpose: to be the fastest track bike available for bunch and individual events. It does this thanks to lessons learned from the Y1Rs and TT1, but whilst if you squint it may appear similar, the actual design is far more specific to track racing.

A whole new aero design, for a whole new challenge

So why did Colnago even need the new frame? The last few years have seen aerodynamics drastically increase the speed of bike racing. The team pursuit world record now sits at 3:40.730, while the individual pursuit has dipped below 4 minutes, previously a winning time for the team event.

Meanwhile, bunch events are also raced at speeds in excess of 60kph, and this requires a new design process to create the fastest track frame for the job.

Aerodynamics are not linear

Why does speed matter? Weight is a simple metric because the factors it affects respond more linearly. Since gravity remains constant, reducing weight results in a linear performance gain when air resistance stays steady. However, aerodynamics differ because air resistance increases proportional to the square of velocity, while the power needed to overcome it rises cubically.

In other words, the faster you go, the more challenging the problem becomes. At higher speeds, the power required to overcome drag is much greater than at lower speeds, and it is this physics that explains why, at the Tour de France this year, the fastest setup for the top GC contenders in the mountain TT was a time trial bike rather than a road bike, even when 1kg lighter. That’s how quickly the pros were climbing those mountains.

At track racing speeds, the speeds are even higher, so air resistance is the most dominant force a rider experiences, above all other factors. If I have my maths correct, at 60kph on a 0˚ gradient, the percentage of the force you have to produce to overcome aerodynamic drag is ~94.5%, increasing to 95.9% at 70kph.

This is why the new T1Rs has been designed with speeds of above 60 kph in mind, specifically for these racing speeds. And that specificity is very important.

Why not just copy an aero bike?

Different frame structures perform aerodynamically in different ways at various speeds. One bike might be faster than another at 30 kph, but that relationship could reverse at 60 kph.

One of the main reasons for this is the Reynolds number (Re). Lower Re generally promotes smoother, more laminar airflow, while higher Re produces a more energetic, turbulent boundary layer. Because Re increases proportionally with velocity (when altitude and air density are constant), the faster the speed, the higher the Re.

As speed increases, the air behaves in a more turbulent yet higher-energy manner, which has significant aerodynamic consequences. We see examples of this optimisation elsewhere. For instance, many cycling garments and components incorporate small surface “trips” — textures or seams on front-facing cylindrical surfaces such as the arms — to induce controlled turbulence. This helps the airflow stay attached longer, reducing pressure drag behind the body and lowering total drag, even though skin-friction drag rises slightly. At higher speeds, where air naturally tends toward turbulence, this strategy generally requires the trips to be spaced closer together to adapt to the increased speed.

For frames, the situation differs slightly. Tube sections can be designed as airfoil-like shapes rather than cylindrical ones and feature a longer chord length (the straight line distance from leading to trailing edge). Evidence of this can be seen in the design of the TR1S fork, which exhibits longer, ‘flatter’ aerofoil shapes and an extended chord length. This is because, in this context, aerodynamic efficiency depends heavily on the airflow remaining attached along the surface. The longer the chord or surface, the longer air flows cleanly over it. On the track, where handling and weight are less constrained than on the road, deeper and longer airfoil profiles can be utilised without compromise. At the higher Reynolds numbers reached at 60–70 kph, the airflow has enough energy to stay attached over a long, tapered section. This results in less flow separation, smaller wakes, and consequently lower pressure drag.

A closer look at the design reveals that these differences are more noticeable with the Y1Rs. The new T1Rs frame leverages this by using elongated profiles that taper to fine trailing edges. Although this slightly increases surface area and skin-friction drag, the significant reduction in pressure drag leads to an overall lower drag coefficient.

By contrast, Kamm-tailed tube shapes, characterised by a truncated, squared-off rear, are more common on road frames because they perform effectively across a wide range of yaw angles, such as those encountered in crosswinds and at lower speeds. However, at higher speeds, the effective yaw angle decreases; the apparent wind approaches more directly head-on, allowing shapes to be optimised for that scenario.

On an indoor track, yaw angles are minimal, so the benefits of the truncated profile largely become negligible. Under these conditions, longer, sharper, and pointed airfoil tubes, like those on the T1Rs, generally deliver superior aerodynamic performance.

Interestingly, at lower speeds and lower Re, the less energetic air with greater potential for separation may not stay attached to the length of the tube shape as well, resulting in increased pressure drag from similar designs. What works well in one situation may perform poorly in another.

You wouldn't expect to drive an F1 car through a town centre

Why don’t we see this design methodology on road bikes and time trial bikes?

It’s not entirely accurate to say we don’t see it at all. Of course, some elements of this are present on TT bikes, given the 50-55kph average speeds that pros ride at during those events. However, on road bikes and TT bikes, external factors mean these frame shapes would not be suitable.

First, crosswinds. Not only would this T1Rs frame be more difficult to handle in windy conditions, but the shape of the tubes could also hinder performance compared to the more tailed profile of the Y1Rs. Next is weight; these tube shapes are heavier because more material is needed to create them.

Stiffness is another consideration. On the road, the tarmac is far less smooth than a velodrome's wooden surface. Extended tube shapes tend to offer poor compliance, making a bike like the T1Rs extremely unforgiving outside a velodrome.

Finally, practical considerations come into play, such as water bottles. In a race on the road, you need to carry water. The T1Rs isn’t intended to solve this problem, and owing to its design, it’s highly likely that attaching a bottle would slow the bike down.

This issue is addressed very specifically in Colnago’s TT1 frame, with its integrated frame bottles, and similarly, the Y1Rs’s integrated bottle cage, which shields a standard bottle and integrates it into the frame, designed for specific operating conditions.

What the T1Rs represents is akin to a F1 car — designed for speed and racing on a track. Adding gears, brakes, or bottle cages would undoubtedly prevent it from becoming a fast, or even decent, road bike.

Design studies leading to bikes like this exemplify the application of specificity—creating shapes that perform optimally within their intended environment, much like a fighter jet or a Formula 1 car. Outside that context, it would likely be much slower.

That’s what makes bikes like this really exciting.

The organiser of the DerbyWheel keirin series, ruled to be a “forbidden event” by the UCI two years ago, has said the project is “moving forward” and “will be implemented”.

The new track cycling series was first announced in October 2023, promising a mammoth prize pot of $600,000 (£455,000) for each round.

It planned to follow a similar model to pro keirin racing in Japan, with events expected to be distributed as sports betting content around the world.

Rider inductions took place in early 2024, and a test event was scheduled for last April, but was postponed after the UCI refused to authorise the series, and threatened fines and suspensions for UCI-licensed riders who compete in it.

DerbyWheel’s president DJ Hyun has now released a statement, a year and a half on, apologising for delays and a lack of updates.

“Due to a combination of internal and external challenges, DerbyWheel has been unable to operate normally for over a year,” Hyun wrote, adding that the series has experienced “significant difficulties”.

Earlier this year, the head of DerbyWheel’s race operations stepped down, and recruitment into the role is still underway.

Hyun also explained that, due to the launch delays, the series needs to renew its deals with riders, venues and partners. “Once these improvements are completed early next year, and all stakeholders are aligned, we expect to confirm a revised launch plan and resume regular race operations soon after,” the DerbyWheel president said.

“Although it remains difficult to specify an exact date for the launch of regular races, we want to assure all DW players and partners that the project is moving forward with commitment and care. Even if there is a further delay, DerbyWheel will be implemented, and opportunities for DW players to participate - either as athletes or in other roles - will be provided.”

Events like DerbyWheel only require UCI authorisation if they want to register on the UCI calendar, something a spokesperson from the series previously told Cycling Weekly they do not intend to do.

The UCI, however, has threatened “disciplinary action” against UCI-licenses riders who take part, referring them to an article that says they could face a fine of up to 10,000 CHF (£9,500) and a suspension of up to six months.

DerbyWheel was originally launched with the intention to host weekly racing rounds in the UK, Australia and Korea.

In his statement shared on Wednesday, series president Hyun said plans are progressing for races on an indoor 400m track in Asia. “If confirmed, these races will be held regularly alongside those on 250m tracks in the UK and Australia, creating more competitive opportunities for our riders,” he said.

Specific locations and dates for the series are still unknown.

German track cyclist Roger Kluge has accused the UCI commissaires at last week’s Track World Championships of “misconduct” after they were late to add up a rival team’s points in the Madison, leaving Kluge and his partner unexpectedly without a medal.

With 12 laps to go in the 200-lap event, Denmark's pairing attacked off the front of the bunch, securing 10 points in the final sprint that meant they overtook Germany for bronze. The scoreboard at the time of the attack, however, showed Denmark in fifth, 32 points behind Germany.

Previous points earned were added to the tallies following the race, and Denmark was awarded 20 points for a lap gained shortly after the halfway point.

Although the final standings were correct, Kluge said he and his partner Moritz Augenstein would have reacted differently to the Danish attack if they had known their points tallies were so close.

“There was no danger from our perspective,” Kluge wrote on Instagram. “If we, and certainly Team GB, had known that Team DEN also had about 60 points on their account, Team DEN wouldn’t have simply rolled away with 12 laps to go, we would have been on the wheel, and the final two sprints would have turned out completely differently.”

Belgium won gold in the event with 81 points, Great Britain silver with 73, and Denmark bronze with 71.

Germany’s Kluge and Augenstein, thinking they had a 30-point buffer in third going into the final two sprints, were later judged to have finished fourth with 64 points. The German pair initially turned up to the podium ceremony, but after delays in declaring the official results, were replaced by Denmark.

“This misconduct on the part of the UCI commissaires clearly influenced and distorted the race, which is simply unacceptable and definitely shouldn't be allowed to go unchallenged at a World Championship,” Kluge wrote of the points scoring during the event.

“If we athletes or personnel make mistakes, there are penalties or even disqualifications. We can’t just say, ‘We’re sorry, please accept my apologies.’ But the UCI is allowed to do that, and it’s depriving us athletes, and certainly the federations of a result in an Olympic discipline, which would have led to future advancement for both the individual and the federation.”

In points-based events like the Madison, riders rely on a table shown on a screen at the top of the banking to keep track of where they, and their opponents, stand. The event, which involves 18 pairs swapping in and out of the action with handslings, can often be chaotic, and 15 lap gains were earned by teams in the men’s race at the World Championships on Sunday.

Cycling Weekly has contacted the UCI for response to Kluge’s comments.

Dutch sprinter Harrie Lavreysen etched his name in the history books once again on Sunday when he became the first rider to win four gold medals at a single UCI Track World Championships.

The 28-year-old, having already won the team sprint, keirin and kilometre time trial, rounded out the competition by easing through the sprint competition, beating Great Britain’s Matthew Richardson 2-0 in the final. He marked the victory – his seventh in a row in the event – by waving four fingers to the crowds as he circled the track, one for each rainbow jersey he had earned.

"This is really not normal,” Lavreysen told NOS of his achievement. “I said beforehand that it would be exciting, with the kilometre time trial under my belt, but I felt really great again today.”

This August, Lavreysen’s opponent Richardson broke the world record for the 200m flying lap, showing form that threatened to topple the Dutchman’s dynasty.

"He's certainly the fastest over 200m, but sprinting is a different story,” Lavreysen said. “This one is quite enjoyable. I'm winning my fourth gold here, but the individual sprint is the most important event. It's wonderful when you step onto the track and know, ‘I can take on anyone, I can beat anyone.’ That's pure enjoyment."

Now a 20-time world champion, Lavreysen holds the most titles of any rider in history at the Track World Championships, an honour he claimed last year in Copenhagen. He’s also the Netherlands’ most successful summer Olympian, having won three gold medals at the Paris Games last year.

The joy of taking his latest clean sweep, he said, was “truly indescribable”.

“I kind of dreamed of going for four. It was actually a bit of a goal last year, but I honestly didn't expect it to be possible this year,” he said.

Thanks to Lavreysen’s success, as well as the three golds earned by Hetty van de Wouw and two by Lorena Wiebes, the Netherlands topped the medal table in Santiago, Chile after the five-day event. Great Britain finished second overall, with 14 medals, four of which gold.

Elsewhere on day five, Mexico’s Yareli Acevedo emerged the surprise winner after gaining three laps in the women's points race; Italy’s Elia Viviani hailed the “perfect ending” to his 16-year professional career as he won the elimination race; Mina Sato successfully defended her keirin honours for Japan; and in the final event of the championships, the Belgian pairing of Lyndsay de Vylder and Fabio van den Bossche won the men’s Madison ahead of Great Britain’s Mark Stewart and Josh Tarling.

Great Britain’s Katie Archibald and Maddie Leech took home a masterful Madison title on Saturday night at the UCI Track World Championships, adding a third gold medal to their country’s tally before Anna Morris made it four in the individual pursuit.

The Madison pair came into the event with the goal of a top-five finish, but ended up the runaway leaders after the Netherlands crashed out. They took the lead in the second half of the 120-lap race, scoring consistently across the final four sprints, and finishing with 30 points, six ahead of France in second, and 10 ahead of the Olympic champions Italy.

The victory marked Archibald’s first in the event since 2018, and her seventh rainbow jersey in total. Leech, a debutant, enjoyed gold as her first Worlds medal.

“It’s pretty crazy. I don’t think I still believe it, but hopefully in the morning it will sink in,” the 22-year-old said.

A stranger to World Championships podiums, Leech was guided through the ceremony by Archibald, who pointed to where to stand, and helped her young team-mate into her rainbow jersey after it became caught on her earring.

“There’s nine years between us,” Archibald said of her partner. “Maddie was 13 years old when the first women’s Madison title was contended. She’s grown up with this race as a reality, which hasn’t always been the case. It feels very cool to be next to somebody on that journey.”

Leech described Archibald as a “legend of the sport”, adding that she had learnt a lot from competing alongside the former Olympic champion. “She’s a great person, so I’m really happy to have had the opportunity to ride with her this week,” she said.

Later in the evening, Anna Morris secured back-to-back world titles in the individual pursuit, toppling Josie Knight in an all-British final.

Only a second separated the two team-mates in qualifying, but Morris made further strides in the final, leading from the first lap, and eventually winning by more than two seconds with a 4:27.005. This year marked the first time the event was contested over 4km, having previously been 3km.

Winning over the new distance, Morris said, was “really special”.

“I didn’t know how I’d feel coming into the race being a defending champion, so that was a new experience. I just tried to stick to my processes, and I had support from my team around me. It was nice to finish it off,” said the British champion and former world record holder.

“It’s really nice to be able to share the podium with Josie. We’ve both been training really hard for it in Manchester, so to keep trying to push the standard within the British cohort is really nice.”

The USA’s Chloé Dygert, four times an individual pursuit world champion, claimed the bronze medal.

Elsewhere on the night in Santiago, Chile, the Netherlands’ Hetty van de Wouw continued to be the breakout star of the championships, breaking her own world record twice in the women’s kilometre time trial to earn her third world title of the competition. The benchmark in the event now stands at 1:03.121, more than a second faster than the previous 1:04.497.

Just three points separated fourth from first in the men’s omnium. Spain’s Albert Torres, having tallied 133, won by two points ahead of Japan’s Kazushige Kuboki and Belgium’s Lindsay de Vylder, the defending champion.

The five-day championships will come to a close on Sunday, with world titles on the line in the women’s points race, women’s keirin, men’s elimination race, men’s Madison and men’s sprint.

Having eased through qualifying, Great Britain’s Matthew Richardson will face Australia’s Leigh Hoffman in the semi-finals of the sprint competition; the winner will go on to face either Harrie Lavreysen (Netherlands) or Nicholas Paul (Trinidad and Tobago).

Find all the information you need to stream the action live through our how-to-watch guide.

It was a special evening for Brits named Josh at the UCI Track World Championships on Friday, as Josh Tarling and Josh Charlton won their country’s first titles of the competition in Santiago, Chile.

Tarling, riding in his first event on debut, won the points race with a commanding display, closing down moves, gaining a lap, and winning three sprints. The Welshman’s 56 points gave him a winning margin of six over the USA’s Peter Moore, and a 100% record at the Track Worlds.

“It went to plan so far,” Tarling said post-race, after celebrating his maiden world title by draping a Union Jack over his shoulders.

“I didn’t know how [my first Track Worlds] would be or how it would feel, so not knowing was scary,” he said. “[In the race] I felt pretty good. I think it was good that I got those early points in just so I knew the legs were there.”

A former time trial bronze medallist at the UCI Road World Championships, the 21-year-old will have the chance to earn a second rainbow jersey on Sunday when he competes in the Madison alongside Mark Stewart.

“Now I think I have a little bit more of an idea of where we’re at and Mark’s in a good place as well, so it should be good,” he said.

Later on in the evening, Josh Charlton became the first British man to win the individual pursuit world title since Bradley Wiggins in 2008.

The 22-year-old European champion led his final with Denmark’s Rasmus Pedersen from the opening lap, stretching his advantage out to more than three seconds over the 4km. Charlton’s winning time of 4:04.122 was more than four seconds off his personal best – he broke the world record in qualifying last year with a 3:59.304 and went on to win silver – but comfortably enough to secure a maiden world title.

Elsewhere for Great Britain, Joe Truman scored back-to-back bronze medals in the kilometre time trial, placing behind the Dutch pair of Jeffrey Hoogland and Harrie Lavreysen, who successfully defended his title.

Having qualified second fastest, Truman clocked a time of 59.268 seconds in the final, more than a second behind Hoogland’s 58.163. Lavreysen won with a 57.978.

There was more Dutch glory on Friday night as Lorena Wiebes added omnium gold to her scratch race victory on the opening day, and Hetty van de Wouw won her first individual title in the women’s sprint. Great Britain’s Emma Finucane, the defending champion in the latter, was relegated out of the competition in the quarterfinals for entering her opponent’s sprinter’s lane.

The Track Worlds continue with their penultimate day on Saturday, when titles will be contested in the women’s kilometre time trial, women’s Madison, men’s omnium, and women’s individual pursuit.

Visit our streaming guide to find out how you can watch the action.