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

British track sprinter Matthew Richardson has said he will "co-operate fully" with any investigation after he was withdrawn last-minute from this week's UCI Track World Championships.

The 27-year-old was pulled on Monday from Great Britain's 20-rider squad for the event in Shanghai, China, scheduled to begin on Wednesday, amid reports of serious misconduct.

According to The Times, Richardson is under investigation for discriminatory posts and behaviour.

In an Instagram post shared on Tuesday afternoon, Richardson said: "I understand the seriousness of what has been raised in recent reports about my withdrawal from the 2026 UCI Track Cycling World Championships.

"British Cycling has said it looks into matters like this through its established procedures. I will co-operate fully with its processes. I assure everyone that I will do so properly, and appropriately and with contrition for the feelings of anyone who might be affected.

"Out of fairness to everyone involved, and on advice, like British Cycling, I will not be commenting further until any process is complete. I am deeply disappointed to miss the World Championships, and I wish the Great Britain team and every rider competing the very best.

"I ask that my family's privacy is respected at this time."

British Cycling confirmed to Cycling Weekly on Monday that Richardson had been withdrawn from the Worlds squad, but did not provide a reason.

While the governing body said it does not comment on internal investigations, it shared the following statement with The Times: "British Cycling takes any allegations of harassment, bullying or discrimination extremely seriously.

"Where concerns are raised, they are investigated thoroughly through our established procedures. Out of fairness to anyone involved in an investigation, we would not comment on any ongoing process."

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

He was expected to compete in three events: the team sprint, sprint and keirin. He won two silver medals at the Worlds last October, and is the reigning sprint and keirin European champion.

Great Britain's men’s sprint squad will instead rely on Harry Ledingham-Horn, Ed Lowe and Joe Truman.

It was early winter last year when Taylor Phinney got a strange call from a friend. The 2028 LA Olympics were approaching, the friend told him, and USA Cycling was looking for some “power horses” to join the men’s team pursuit squad. Did he want to be put in touch with the coach?

Phinney was stunned. “I thought it was a funny joke that somebody would even think that I was still capable of doing that,” the 36-year-old now laughs. Yes, he had once been a power horse – he won a time trial stage of the Giro d’Italia in 2012, took silver in the TT at the Road World Championships the same year, and later came eighth at Paris-Roubaix – but he was six years retired from road racing, and hadn’t competed on a track for over 15 years, when he won his second individual pursuit world title.

As far as Phinney was concerned, his cycling career was over. His track days were long dead and buried. But after he put down the phone to his friend, he says, “the idea was planted in my head”.

Phinney’s talking to Cycling Weekly from a hotel on Chongming Island, a leafy, out-of-town district of Shanghai, China. On Wednesday, he will lead the USA’s team pursuit quartet off the start line at the UCI Track World Championships, his first in 16 years.

The journey there has been rapid and unexpected, driven by an overarching goal: to compete at the LA Olympics in two years. It’s an event that holds huge 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 at the same Games in the team time trial. The opportunity to add to that legacy was too good to ignore.

Not long after the strange phone call, Phinney went to Gran Canaria on a training camp with his wife, former Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift champion Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney. His legs felt good – he had been spending a lot of time in the gym. “I was trying to have more of an Arnold Schwarzenegger body, not necessarily a cyclist body, and I just kept thinking about this idea,” he says.

“It felt very cinematic, and it felt like it would close a loop on my career that I never actually closed on the track ever since the individual pursuit was taken out of the Olympic programme. So I thought I’d give it a shot.”

Phinney’s friend set up a video call with the USA’s men’s endurance coach, Jono Hailstone. He explained there was a team camp in April, and invited Phinney to come along. “I felt like If I was going to do it, then I was going to do it right,” Phinney says.

On 1 February, he emailed USA Cycling and USADA, the anti-doping authority, to ask to be re-added to the testing pool. It's that moment, Phinney now realises, that marked his coming out of retirement. He then worked closely with the accomplished Australian track coach Tim Decker, and built towards his tryout in the spring.

Fittingly, the camp took place in Carson, at Team USA’s home velodrome, where the Olympics will be held in two years. Phinney paid his own expenses to get there from his home in Girona, Spain. “I didn’t have a bike position, didn’t have any wind tunnel data,” he says.

“I just showed up to the camp and basically was changing my position in between every single effort to try and find something that was fast.” Did it work? Put simply, he says, “the tryout went well – since then, we’ve been to the wind tunnel, and I’m actually part of the programme now.”

Phinney officially announced his comeback on Instagram after the camp in April. “Never in a million years could I have predicted this,” he wrote. The post now has almost 400 comments – a scrapbook of encouragement from his friends, fellow riders and fans.

“The response has been overwhelmingly positive,” Phinney says. “I wasn’t totally sure how it was going to be received because I kind of just ghosted from the professional road racing scene when I did [retire]. That’s what I needed to do at that time, apparently.”

Phinney’s last road result was a DNF at the Japan Cup in October 2019. He had only announced days before what seemed like a snap retirement, aged 29. By then, though, injuries had pushed him to the point he fell out of love with professional cycling. He turned instead to a new life as an artist, trading training logs for oil paints and DJ decks, and signed up for the odd gravel race to keep his hand in.

It was to his surprise then, that, come August this year, he was immersed once again in the bubble of elite cycling. Phinney joined the US team for a second camp in Zolder, Belgium, and found that training in velodromes, after only a few months back, had begun to feel “quite familiar”.

“It feels like a nice continuation of something that I closed a long time ago,” he says. “Time is funny, you know. It was a while ago, but it doesn’t feel like it was that long ago.”

Of course, the comeback has not been without sacrifices. The dates of the August camp meant Phinney had to miss this summer’s Tour de France Femmes, having previously gone every year to support his wife.

He also says he doesn’t have as much energy to be creative, “but I’m not so sad about it. I came to the realisation that I’ll have my whole life to be creative, and that’s a pursuit that I want to always be involved in. But my physical body is only capable of going this fast for a limited amount of time.”

That speed was put to the test in late August at the US National Track Championships, an event Phinney hadn’t competed at since he was a teenager. He went on to win gold in the team pursuit, though he plays down the achievement. “The National Championships is not the most competitive event,” he says. “I mean, we did like a 4:03, which is so slow. But we went 11 seconds faster than that the other day in training in a race sim[ulation].”

The goal now is to go even faster in Shanghai. This week’s World Championships mark an important first step in the qualifying process for the LA Olympics. Nineteen nations are set to compete in the men’s team pursuit. Only eight will start in LA.

“We don’t really know what to expect or how we’re to rank ourselves among our peers,” Phinney says. But he’s confident in his teammates. “Especially with the addition of Ashlin Barry,” he says, naming the 19-year-old who just won the under-23 road world title. “We’re all saying that we’re jumping on board the Smashlin Express, because he’s really carrying the team right now.”

Barry’s so strong, in fact, that Phinney is planning on ceding his own entry in Friday’s individual pursuit to the teenager. “I think he could win or get a medal,” Phinney says, and cites a fun, if sobering, fact: “The first World Championship that I won, he was two.”

Unlike Phinney, Barry was part of the US team that finished fourth at the Worlds last October – their best result since they won a bronze medal in 1995. The nation hasn’t fielded a men’s team pursuit squad at the Olympics since 2000, but if the results roll on like last year, they’ll qualify for LA comfortably.

Phinney is determined to make it there. Is that what closing the loop looks like to him? “For sure there are ideals. You set goals, and the goal is clear: racing in the Olympics,” he says. “But I think in some way, just being part of the process is enough of closing the circle. As far as I was concerned, until November or December of last year, all of the circles were closed. I was fully retired and wasn’t even thinking about racing.

“Just to be here at the Worlds and to be part of the team and feel like I’m actually an elite athlete competing at the highest level with the three or four other best team pursuiters in the country, that’s something I would not have predicted for myself even last year in October.”

A few minutes later, as our call draws to a close, Phinney utters a sentence that he also likely never predicted he'd say: “I’m going to go do some heat training now, like the youth.” It's a simple line, but one that embodies how much his attitude to elite cycling has changed since he took that strange phone call last winter.

What does the heat training involve? A turbo session in a hazmat suit? “Nah, I’m not that crazy yet. I’ll be there eventually. I’m just going to take an uncomfortably hot bath,” he says. If it gets him even a tiny bit closer to LA, it will have been worth it.

Men’s team pursuit qualifying begins at 12:29pm local time on Wednesday (9:29pm PST Tuesday, 5:29am BST). If the USA qualify in the top eight, they’ll also compete in the first round at 7:17pm (4:17am PST, 12:17pm BST).

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

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.

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.

Great Britain’s Katie Archibald added a 16th medal to her UCI Track World Championships collection on Thursday night, earning silver in a crash-marred elimination race.

The event was stopped and restarted twice in Santiago, Chile, after two heavy crashes caused two riders to be stretchered off. Archibald came into the final two with Ireland’s Lara Gillespie, and led out the last lap from the front, but was pipped on the line.

“Once we did get going, I had a couple of close calls, and then got into the swing of things,” double Olympic champion Archibald said afterwards. “I’m really, really happy to get to that point to contend when it’s essentially a different race in the final two; you do an elimination race and then you do a match sprint.

“I feel like I did well in the elimination race, and then I just didn’t have the legs in the final there. Normally I come off these races in pieces, physically done-in, and I felt like I didn’t have the top end. I’m, rationally, very happy. Physically, my legs, I’m a bit disappointed, but I guess that’s a mark of respect for a World Championship title.”

Gillespie’s gold medal made her Ireland’s first ever female winner at the Track World Championships.

Immediately after the elimination race, reigning sprint champion Emma Finucane was relegated in her quarterfinal with Iana Burlakova, and forced to bow out early in her title defence.

The Welshwoman, who was targeting a third rainbow jersey in a row, was initially judged to have won the deciding heat, before the UCI commissaires ruled against her for “entering the sprinter’s lane when the opponent was already there”.

GB’s men’s sprinters also left the keirin competition in the quarterfinals, both Olympic silver medallist Matthew Richardson and Harry Ledingham-Horn unable to make the top-four in their heats. The event was won by Dutchman Harrie Lavreysen, now a 18-time world champion.

GB earned two medals in day two, the second coming in the final event of the night, the women’s team pursuit. The quartet of Josie Knight, Anna Morris, Meg Barker and Maddie Leech beat Belgium comfortably in their bronze medal ride-off, after qualifying second-fastest on Wednesday. Italy won the title, ending a two-year British streak.

The GB squad has now collected four medals in Santiago, having picked up silvers in both the men's and women's team sprints on Wednesday.

Elsewhere, Germany’s Moritz Augenstein won the men’s scratch race, and Denmark successfully defended their men's team pursuit title.

The racing continues at the Track World Championships on Friday with finals in the men’s points race, men’s kilometre time trial, men’s individual pursuit, women’s omnium and women’s sprint. Check out our streaming guide for more information on how to watch the action.

The UCI Track World Championships are the pinnacle of the velodrome calendar, the chance for the best riders in the world to show their speed on the boards. They have been happening in a format since 1893, making them older than the Tour de France, and this year's are the 122nd.

There are the familiar events from the Olympics, like the team pursuit, omnium and keirin, but also Worlds-specific events like the kilometre TT and the scratch race. There are 11 finals for both men and women, with rainbow jerseys and gold medals on offer. With the next Olympics in 2028, nations will be starting to form their squads.

This year's event will take place in Santiago, Chile, the first time the Worlds have taken place outside of Europe for the first time since Hong Kong hosted it in 2017 and return to South America for the first time since 2014. The races begin on Wednesday 22 October and end on Sunday 26 October. Chile is four hours behind BST, so keep that in mind.

The start lists are packed with big names, from GB's Emma Finucane and Katie Archibald, to road stars like Lorena Wiebes (Netherlands), and fast men such as Harrie Lavreysen, also of the Netherlands.

Below, Cycling Weekly has compiled everything you need to know about broadcasters and live streams, so you can watch the Track Worlds wherever you are in the world.

Quick guide to watching the Track Worlds

• UK: BBC (Free), TNT Sports/Discovery+ (£30.99/mon)
• US and Canada: Flobikes (USD$29.99/mon, CAN$39.99/mon)
• Australia: Stan (from AUD$12/mon + AUD$15/mon sports add-on)
• Free coverage: BBC | UCI YouTube (geo-restricted)
• Anywhere: Watch your usual stream while abroad with NordVPN

How to watch the Track Worlds in the UK

In the UK, this year's Track World Championships will be shown live and free on the BBC, the country's public service broadcaster. (To watch the BBC, viewers are expected to have a TV licence, which costs £174.50 a year.) You can watch on terrestrial TV or the BBC iPlayer streaming service.

Fans will also be able to watch all of the events on TNT Sports, Warner Bros. Discovery's premium sports channels, with streaming via Discovery+, which is £30.99 a month. This offering also gains viewers access to Warner Bros. Discovery's full range of sports listings.

How to watch the Track Worlds in the US and Canada

For North American viewers, this year's coverage of the UCI Track World Championships is on FloBikes.

FloBikes will be broadcasting in the US and Canada. Subscriptions cost $30 or CA$39.99 a month, with savings for annual plans.

How to watch the Track Worlds in Australia

Cycling fans in Australia can watch the Track World Championships on the Stan Sport streaming service.

You'll need to add the Stan Sport package ($20 per month) to a base Stan subscription (from $12 per month).

Can I watch the Track Worlds for free?

There are many places around the world where you can watch the UCI Track World Championships for free.

As with all its World Championships, the UCI is providing free streaming live on YouTube for the Track World Champs. Geo-restrictions apply, on the basis that the stream is blocked in countries that have a licensed broadcaster, so that includes the UK and the US.

To check availability in your area, the UCI has a list of blocked territories.

In the UK, as outlined above, the BBC is broadcasting the events, with free streaming available on BBC iPlayer.

Coverage is geo-restricted, so if you're away from home right now, you'll need a VPN to get your usual coverage while abroad – more on that below.

How to watch the Track Worlds while abroad

Most streaming platforms have geo-restrictions in place, meaning they only work in certain countries. But being locked out of the races is a thing of the past thanks to a VPN, so you can continue to watch the Track Worlds while on the move.

A Virtual Private Network is a piece of internet security software that can alter your device's location, so you can unblock your usual streaming services, even when you're abroad.

Want to know more? We have an explainer on the benefits, costs, and considerations...
– Should I use a VPN to watch cycling?

When are the Track Worlds on?

The UCI Track World Championships take place over five days, with morning sessions taking place each day from 11am local time, and then an evening session beginning at 6:30pm local time. On the Sunday, the final session begins at 1:30pm local time. However, on the first day, the morning session is not being broadcast.

UK coverage of the Track Worlds begins at 3pm BST for morning sessions, and 10:30pm for evening sessions.

In the US and Canada, morning sessions begin at 10am EDT, and evening sessions at 5:30pm EDT.

See also: Cycling TV and streaming guide

What to expect from the Track Worlds

The year that follows an Olympic Games is reasonably transitional, as teams set up their plans for 2028, blooding younger riders and perhaps moving on from those retiring.

However, there are medals and rainbow jerseys to win, so it is still a big deal, especially as track riders have less opportunities to shine throughout the year. There are fascinating things to watch, from Matt Richardson vs Harrie Lavreysen to Team USA's new look team pursuit squad.

Read our full guide to the event here.

We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example: 1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service). 2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad. We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.

Ineos Grenadiers rider Josh Tarling is set to make his UCI Track World Championships debut next week.

The 21-year-old time trial specialist has been selected for the event in Santiago, Chile as part of Great Britain’s 22-rider squad, which counts both debutants and experienced track Olympians.

A two-time national champion inside the velodrome, Tarling’s last track race with GB came at the UCI Nations Cup round in Australia in February 2024, where he won gold with the team pursuit squad. In Santiago, he will compete in the points race and the Madison, alongside Mark Stewart, according to the entry list.

The pair are joined in the men’s endurance squad by Olympic silver medallist Charlie Tanfield, former individual pursuit world record holder Josh Charlton, 2023 scratch race world champion Will Tidball, Rapha Super-League winner Matt Bostock and debutant Michael Gill.

In the women’s endurance squad, double Olympic champion Katie Archibald will compete in the elimination race and the Madison, with debutant Maddie Leech, but will not feature in the team pursuit.

“The only other time I’ve not ridden the team pursuit at Worlds was 2017, so I find it a wee bit tricky,” Archibald said in a press conference this week. The 31-year-old began working with her brother, John, as a coach earlier this year, and has been training in Glasgow, with her eye on making the team pursuit squad for the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.

“It’s meant I’ve not been able to make the prep sessions [in Manchester] for team pursuit at Worlds,” she said. “Incidentally, because I’m not riding team pursuit at Worlds, my Hope bike will be ridden by one of the men’s team, because they have a really fresh cohort.”

The remaining three of last year’s world-title-winning squad – Josie Knight, Anna Morris and Megan Barker – will ride the team pursuit in Santiago, alongside Olympic bronze medallist Jess Roberts.

In the sprint events, Olympic champion Emma Finucane will look to earn her third individual sprint title in a row. The 22-year-old is the only one of the team sprint trio who won gold at the Paris Olympics competing at next week's Worlds. She will race alongside debutants Iona Moir, Rhianna Parris-Smith and Rhian Edmunds, with 2023 Worlds silver medallist Lauren Bell also competing across the sprint events.

Two months after breaking the 200m flying lap world record, Matthew Richardson will make his long-awaited Worlds debut for GB. The sprinter, who won three medals for Australia at last year's Olympics, swapped nationality to his birth country after the Games, and was ineligible for selection at last October's Worlds in Copenhagen.

Richardson will be joined by Harry Ledingham-Horn, Joe Truman and Hamish Turnball in the men’s sprint squad, which said farewell to the retiring Jack Carlin earlier this week.

Commenting on the squad, GB performance director Stephen Park said: “As we often see at this stage in an Olympic cycle, we have a great mix of world championship veterans and up and coming talent heading to Santiago.

“I’m looking forward to seeing where we sit among the other nations as all eyes turn to LA 2028.”

The full GB squad for the 2025 UCI Track World Championships in Santiago is below. The event will run from 22-26 October at the Velódromo Peñalolen.

Great Britain's 22-rider squad

Men’s Endurance
Matthew Bostock
Josh Charlton
Michael Gill
Mark Stewart
Josh Tarling
Charlie Tanfield
Will Tidball

Women’s Endurance
Katie Archibald
Meg Barker
Josie Knight
Maddie Leech
Anna Morris
Jessica Roberts

Men’s sprint
Harry Ledingham-Horn
Matthew Richardson
Joe Truman
Hamish Turnbull

Women’s Sprint
Lauren Bell
Rhian Edmunds
Emma Finucane
Iona Moir
Rhianna Parris-Smith

Great Britain equalled their best ever UCI Track World Championships haul on Sunday, the final medal coloured bronze courtesy of Katy Marchant in the keirin.

The squad collected 13 medals throughout the week – four golds, four silvers and five bronzes – matching the previous best from 2012, when GB won six golds ahead of the London Olympics.

The Netherlands topped the medal table at this week's competition inside Denmark’s Ballerup Super Arena. The Dutch collected fewer medals overall than GB, also winning four golds, but one more silver.

Marchant’s keirin bronze was her nation’s only medal on the final day. She earned her podium place with a last-lap dash to the line, overtaking teammate Emma Finucane down the home straight.

“I try to go into keirins with not too much of a plan. I think, sometimes for me, if you go in with a plan, it tends to not unfold the way you want it to. I think I have a really good instinct on racing and I raced really well all day,” Marchant told Cycling Weekly.

“Tactically, I don’t think I absolutely nailed that final, which I hate to say, and I feel a little bit disappointed by,” she continued. “I know I’m really strong in the last lap, and a late surge is my kind of thing, so with a lap and a half to go, I just thought to myself, ‘Just give it everything’. At the bell, I was going as hard as I could. I always fight to the line.”

For Marchant, who has been part of the GB squad for over a decade, this week's championships were the most successful of her career. Her other accolades include gold in the team sprint with her Olympic champion teammates on Wednesday, and a bronze in the 500m time trial.

“It’s been really, really tough, but we’ve used each other to get through this. The result that we got in the team sprint gave us really good momentum,” she said.

“I became European champion early in the year, I became Olympic champion, and then I became world champion. I’ve been in this sport for a long time now, and I’ve never been able to say that. Winning breeds winning, I think, and I just feel in a really, really good place.”

The women’s keirin was won by Mina Sato of Japan, who followed her compatriot Kento Yamasaki’s success in the men’s event. After a 37-year keirin drought, the discipline’s birthplace has now crowned two world champions in a week.

“If it’s not us that’s winning, I enjoy seeing them win,” said Marchant, who went to keirin school in Japan in 2016. “You know how much that means to their country as a whole. Yes, track cycling is big in the UK, but it’s nothing like what keirin racing is in Japan.”

In the women’s points race, Denmark’s retiring Julie Leth claimed her second world title in two days, defeating the event’s reigning champion, Lotte Kopecky (Belgium), by just three points.

Leth led the standings going into the final sprint, and only had to place higher than Belgian to win. Unfortunately for Kopecky, an untimely chain drop left her unable to contest the last dash, and Leth charged ahead to the roar of the Danish faithful.

Afterwards, the home crowds rose to their feet in applause, syncing up their claps to the beat of Tina Turner’s ‘The Best’ played over the speakers.

There was déjà vu an hour later when the velodrome DJ chose the same song to celebrate Tobias Hansen’s victory in the men's elimination race. The Dane went into the finale with former two-time champion Elia Viviani, who was too tired to kick in the last sprint, instead peeling away and conceding the victory.

The race was neutralised four times from start to finish, due to collisions, a crash, and a lengthy elimination decision. For seventh place GB rider Noah Hobbs, the stoppages “unsettled” the event.

“It kind of messed with me a little bit when it kept stopping and starting,” he said. “It was just a bit unsettled the whole race, so I was having to do little spurts of energy when I didn’t want to.”

The 20-year-old made his elite debut at the World Championships, and finished sixth in the scratch race held on Thursday. “It’s been good,” Hobbs said of the experience. “It’s one of the only times you get to go to a major event and not have any pressure.

“Obviously I wanted to come away with a decent result. I feel like I’m pretty happy with what I’ve done, especially in the scratch.”

The Netherlands owed a lot of their success at this year’s championships to sprinter Harrie Lavreysen, who added three new world titles to his palmarès, bringing his collection to a record 16.

The 27-year-old won the men’s individual sprint for the sixth year in a row, this time beating his teammate Jeffrey Hoogland 2-0 convincingly in the final. Afterwards, Hoogland held his compatriot’s hand and raised it into the air, an act of respect that acknowledged Lavreysen’s position as the best track sprinter in the world.

Elsewhere on Sunday, German pairing Roger Kluge and Tim Torn Teutenberg won the men’s Madison, thanks in part to two laps gained on the field. After a slow start to the 200-lap race, GB’s Ethan Hayter and Mark Stewart made a second-half grab for points, and finished fifth.

“I’ve been kind of struggling with pace, to be honest,” said Hayter, who also finished fifth in Saturday’s Omnium. “I wasn’t great today, Mark was good. Fifth was a good result, really, considering my form.”

Great Britain medallists

Gold

Katy Marchant, Sophie Capewell, Emma Finucane (team sprint)
Emma Finucane (sprint)
Katie Archibald, Josie Knight, Meg Barker, Anna Morris, Jess Roberts (team pursuit)
Anna Morris (individual pursuit)

Silver

Ethan Hayter, Josh Charlton, Charlie Tanfield, Ollie Wood, Rhys Britton (team pursuit)
Josh Charlton (individual pursuit)
Jess Roberts (Omnium)
Sophie Capewell (500m TT)

Bronze

Joe Truman (1km TT)
Dan Bigham (individual pursuit)
Katy Marchant (500m TT)
Katie Archibald and Neah Evans (Madison)
Katy Marchant (keirin)

A little over three years ago, Anna Morris was working as a junior doctor, pursuing track cycling outside of her shifts. Now, she’s a three-time world champion, her most recent rainbow jersey coming after a shock victory over world record holder Chloé Dygert in the individual pursuit on Saturday night.

To say Morris was the underdog going into the final at the UCI World Championships would have been a just statement. The 29-year-old, who entered the Great Britain squad just two years ago, sat trackside earlier in the afternoon, and watched as Dygert, a four-time title holder in the event, smashed her own world record – taking it from 3:16.937, down more than a second to 3:15.663.

The American then led for more than two thirds of the final, until suddenly, the tables turned. The scoreboards at either end of Denmark’s Ballerup Super Arena flashed green beside Morris’s name with three laps to go. Spurred on by her coach and teammates, the Brit hung on, and won by three tenths of a second.

“When I could hear them screaming, I thought, ‘Maybe you’ve just got to dig really deep here, and then hold on to what you’ve got and see where you end up,’” she told Cycling Weekly. “I heard the guns go. They went at slightly different times, but they were so close together, I wasn’t sure whose had gone first.

"I had to take a little while to register what the scoreboard said, and I’m just in shock really. Chloé’s a phenomenal rider, especially in individual pursuit.”

Morris remembers watching on the television when Dygert set her previous best time four years ago. At that point, the Brit wasn’t long out of medical school – the place she discovered track cycling – and was halfway through a two-year stint as a doctor.

Having already won the team pursuit on Thursday, Morris's plan was simply to do the best she could. “If I could walk away with a personal best, I would have been ecstatic,” she said, “but to be world champion, I’m speechless.

“I was thinking yesterday, ‘I really wonder what it would feel like to walk away with two rainbow jerseys.’ Emma Finucane did it with the team sprint and the sprint. I wondered what it would feel like, not ever thinking that it would happen. It’s more than a dream, to be honest.”

One of those willing Morris across the line was Olympic gold medallist Sophie Capewell, who claimed her first individual Worlds medal earlier in the evening.

The 26-year-old won silver in the 500m time trial, breaking her own British record twice over the course of the day. The grimace on her face afterwards was testament to her effort in the final. As Capewell rolled around the track, she hissed air through gritted teeth. She then collapsed over her turbo trainer, and slowly spun the lactic acid out of her legs.

“I’m one of those athletes, I’ve got massive legs, so I produce a lot of lactic really quickly,” she smiled. “I’m doing it for the big strong girls. Carrying more muscle means you quickly switch on to lactic build up, and it’s really hard to get rid of it.”

Capewell’s silver came after disappointment the previous day, when she missed out on the podium in the individual sprint. “I had a choice today to be sad or to turn it into anger,” she said. “I tried to turn it into anger and get it all out on the bike, and I think it paid off.

“This year’s been big, but the last, I would say, five years for me have been massive. It’s been a big build-up, and a struggle at times, to get through not just grief issues [Capewell’s father, Nigel, died in 2021], but doubting myself, having misunderstandings – not in a bad way – with coaches, but trying to figure out the best way to work for me. It’s taken a long time to come around, but I’m glad to finish [my season] on a high.”

Iana Burlakova, competing as a neutral athlete, won the gold medal in the event, while Katy Marchant – Capewell’s gold-medal-winning teammate in the team sprint on Wednesday – finished third.

There further medals for GB on day four as Katie Archibald and Neah Evans snatched third in the Madison. The Scottish pair collected points early in the 120-lap event, but fell on the back foot when four other nations gained laps. It took a late surge from Archibald, winning the final sprint, to bunnyhop onto the podium.

“You know that line about how bronze medallists are happier than silver medallists?” Archibald said afterwards. “When you’re losing, there’s a redefinition of what’s a win. When it came down to those three [final] sprints, I was doing the maths thinking, ‘There’s a new plan here. We can still take something.’

“You have to make that decision of whether you’re going gold or whether you’re going bronze. If we had made it a little earlier, maybe it could have been different.”

The decisive moment came when Danish duo Amalie Dideriksen and Julie Leth attacked for a lap in the final third of the race. The home favourites remained out front for around 20 laps, cleaning up maximum points over two sprints, before gaining a lap on the field.

The move catapulted them to the top of the leaderboard, a scene that triggered a roar from the stands. The crowds later serenaded their new Madison champions with an a capella version of the Danish national anthem.

For Evans, who suffered with Epstein-Barr Virus earlier this year, there were positives to take away from the race. “We’re both hugely competitive, and we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t want more,” she said. “We came here to win, but I think when you look at the build-up and all the circumstances behind it, you go, ‘Actually, we strung together a really good race.’”

That turbulent build-up also included a race back to fitness for Archibald, who broke her leg in multiple places back in June.

“This is my 10th World Championships and I’ve had quite an array of build-ups,” said Archibald. “I think until about this morning – I was very nervous this morning – I had no pressure. The power that that gives you, when you’re just kind of bopping around without carrying that knot in your chest for the weeks leading in, that’s something that I want to take forward; know that it will hurt your legs, but it doesn’t have to hurt your head.”

The evening finished with the final race of the men’s Omnium, which saw Belgium’s Lindsay de Vylder earn a first world title. GB’s Ethan Hayter, who won the event in 2021 and 2022, placed fifth.

“The Omnium’s a hard day, it’s all day, and when you’re not really 100%, you start to suffer a bit,” Hayter said. “I’ve not ridden the track since Paris [Olympics], so I think that’s quite a big reason.”

“I’m living a really interesting life,” grins Vlad Loginov. His thick moustache, pointed at both ends, bounces on his upper lip as he speaks. “Life is just going with the flow. But at some moment, if I start thinking about it, it’s like, ‘Wow, life is great.’”

Inside a velodrome packed with career athletes, Loginov stands as an exception. While many of his opponents joined talent pathways as children, working their way up through the age ranks, he didn't find cycling until he was in his mid-twenties. Before that, elite sport was never on Loginov's radar. No, before that, the Ukrainian-born Israeli was a professional folk dancer.

“I was working in an academic ensemble of Ukrainian music and dance… folklore,” he says. “I was working in a theatre, and part-time I was studying in a law academy. So I’m a lawyer, also a dancer, and somehow a cyclist.”

Loginov, now 29 years old, began dancing when he was seven. He performed regularly throughout his teens and early twenties, and trained intensively, too. “All Ukrainian dance is based on squats, jumps, a lot of movements like that,” he says, dropping down to the floor and springing back up in demonstration. “I just transferred it to cycling, and it’s going pretty well.”

This week, Loginov is racing at the UCI Track World Championships, his second appearance at the event in his short cycling career. His introduction to the sport was serendipitous, coming six years ago, when he bought a bike on a whim in a Black Friday sale.

“I moved to Israel [from Ukraine], and I didn’t have any friends,” he says, “so I found cycling. Cycling is therapy for me to adapt to a new country. I was working, I was learning Hebrew, and I was cycling. That was really something special for me, because I could get away from everything, like mental therapy, let’s say.”

In the early days, Loginov would do his dance performances in the morning, and then train on his bike in the afternoons. Quickly, he began to realise, the two worlds weren’t as different as they first appeared.

“I like cycling because it’s similar to theatre,” he says, and gestures to the crowds in the stands. “You have the audience.” He then looks over his shoulder at the track. “This is the stage, and you’re performing. In my first training, I remember I was like, ‘Oh, it’s just theatre, just on a bike. How cool is that?’”

This is perhaps why Loginov found it so easy to adapt to his new sport. In 2021, three years after taking up cycling, he won an elite national road race title, beating riders on WorldTour teams. The victory came not long after he cut back his dance shows, the coronavirus pandemic putting a sharp pin in the performing arts industry.

Today, he says, he still dances “just for fun – I have a ballet show that I perform with sometimes.” Mostly, though, Loginov earns his money as a barista in a café in Tel-Aviv.

“I have training on the track twice a week, so those days I don’t work, because it’s all day track and gym,” he says. “And all the other days, I try to do a workout in the morning, and then my barista shift in the evening.

“It’s pretty hard after the workout. When you’re standing for seven hours on your legs it’s just ouch, ouch, ouch. It’s not the best, but still, it’s better than nothing.”

After finishing 15th in the scratch race on Thursday, Loginov’s attention has now turned to Sunday’s Madison, when he will become one half of Israel’s first pairing to compete at a World Championships. His ambition beyond that is to do the same at the Olympics.

“Madison is my passion, and hopefully we can make it to the Olympics,” he says. A lot can happen in the four-year cycle to Los Angeles, however, as Loginov knows. There will be many more barista shifts, ballet performances, and family duties at home – he and his wife are expecting a second child in March.

“This is what motivates me to give my best, because I know how much I’ve sacrificed,” the 29-year-old says. “I’m really happy we made it [to the World Championships], and let’s see. We’ll try to make it to the Olympics. Hopefully I will still be cycling then.”

There was a guard of honour for Dan Bigham as he exited the track on Friday night, having raced the final four minutes of his journey with the Great Britain national squad.

The 33-year-old retired with a smile on his face and a bronze medal around his neck, won in the individual pursuit, the event he first raced at the UCI Track World Championships in 2018.

As he strolled towards his final round of media interviews, a handful of GB staff formed a tunnel, holding bike wheels in the air for him to walk beneath. It was a small tribute, but a touching one, for a rider who leaves the elite level with a world title, two European titles, and an Olympic silver medal.

“It was emotional, definitely emotional,” Bigham told Cycling Weekly post-race. “When I was warming up, I didn’t feel great, but I’ve done enough of these damn things that you drag yourself kicking and screaming through it. It’s literally the last four minutes I’ll ride at this level, on this stage, and you just look up and you’re like, ‘It’s pretty damn cool.’”

It was fitting, too, that Bigham’s bronze medal ride-off would come against Charlie Tanfield, his long-time teammate and career nemesis in the individual pursuit. The pair finished their final dance with a back-slapping hug, to the applause of the Danish crowd.

“I’ve ridden countless IPs against Chaz, and it’s probably 50-50. I should probably check back and find out for sure,” Bigham said. “The first one was at Nationals, in 2017, we qualified one-two, [Ethan] Hayter was third, one-two in the final. The next year, he kicked my head in. The year after that, he kicked my head in. In 2020, it started to swing the other way, but it’s been tit for tat the last seven years.”

Over the course of that time, Bigham’s relationship with the national team has swung back and forth, too. He parted ways with the track squad in 2018, after his debut IP appearance, when he was told he’d have to choose between his passion for engineering and being a rider. Four years later, he returned to the fold, guiding the team pursuit squad to the world title.

“It’s a shame that when you exit, you’re at the fastest you’ll ever go, the most knowledgeable you’ll ever be, the fittest you’ll ever be,” he said. “But also, the game’s moving forward.”

In the moments before giving his interview, Bigham hung over the fence in the track infield, willing on Josh Charlton in the gold medal ride. The 21-year-old, 12 years his junior, broke the world record in qualifying, but lost out on the title against Italy’s Jonathan Milan, who himself bettered the benchmark in the final, clocking 3:59.153.

“The level’s gone up. It keeps going up. It’s not going to slow down. Everyone keeps asking, ‘Where’s the limit?’ And there isn’t one. It just keeps going,” Bigham said, smiling. “I wouldn’t be surprised if these guys in the next [Olympic] cycle are doing .56/57 [seconds]. It’ll probably happen.”

It was characteristic of the Brit, a man driven by the pursuit of speed, not to lament his own retirement, but rather be excited by the next generation. He, too, hopes his story – the tale of an engineering master’s graduate who went to the Olympics and won a silver medal – will leave a legacy.

“Physiologically, I’m not shit, but I’m also not a specimen, and that’s what it takes to be at this level,” he said.

And yet, in a sport of other-worldly talent, Bigham proved that mortals can graft their way to the top with tireless dedication. “I hope I can champion that,” he said. “Hopefully I can be an inspiration, nonetheless, to all those people, especially at the younger ages, because you can influence so much over time.

“The biggest learning I’ve found is that aerobic power, which is the biggest thing for every cycling event, takes time. Not just a little bit of time, but years and years and years of building up,” he continued. “There’s nothing better than when you’re 18 to have that in front of you to know that’s the case. When you’re 33, I don’t have the years in front of me to do that.”

Instead, Bigham is dedicating the next years of his life to helping others get faster. He’ll start a new role as head of engineering with WorldTour team Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe next year, and already he’s brimming with ideas to test out. Earlier this week, he sent off a 6,500-word project specification, outlining just some of his plans.

“There are certain things in engineering that I’ve wanted to commit to in my whole cycling career, but I haven’t had the time because of the selfishness of wanting to ride my own bike,” he said. “Now, freeing up 20-30 hours a week is going to give me a lot more time to action those engineering ideas, and to do them before other people do, and hopefully bring a whole lot of performance to everybody else.

“All the knowledge I’ve accumulated, it’s so much easier for me to pass that on than it was for me to learn that. And that’s part of the art of life, isn’t it? People have mentors, they learn from those who’ve gone before them, and that’s the role I’m going into, that’s what I’m looking forward to.”

And so, with his black and fluorescent pink Pinarello bike in tow, Bigham closed a chapter in the wide-ranging book of his career. The next one, he hopes, will be equally as exciting.

Emma Finucane’s parents didn’t get to see their daughter win her first UCI Track World Championships gold medal in Glasgow last year, but they were front row to witness her successful title defence on Friday night.

Inside Denmark’s Ballerup Super Arena, the 21-year-old eased through every race she contested, eventually beating the Netherlands’ Hetty van de Wouw 2-0 in the final.

Finucane’s first act on crossing the line was to smile and wave to her parents on the back straight. She then soaked up the applause for a lap, before grinding to a halt in front of them along the barrier, where her father draped a Union Jack over her shoulders.

The moment, Finucane said afterwards, was “so special”; A scene distinctly different to her first world title celebration with her family, which came over videocall, after they had to return home to Wales.

“This was more for them than for me,” Finucane told Cycling Weekly. “They support me no matter what, win or lose. They travelled everywhere with me when I was growing up. I wouldn’t be where I am today without my parents. They were my taxi up and down the M4. They paid for me. They were everything. To have them standing on the sideline, cheering me on, is just massive for me.”

After winning gold in the team sprint on Wednesday, Finucane reset again for her individual sprint defence. She finished top in qualifying, ahead of teammates Sophie Capewell and Katy Marchant, before dispatching China’s Lijuan Wang, Japan’s Mina Sato, and finally Van de Wouw.

“I just really wanted it. I wanted to prove to myself that I can handle the pressure,” she said. “I was a bit of an underdog [last year]. People knew my name, but I was middle of the field, no one really knew who I was. Now, I’ve raced in the rainbow jersey all year. I’ve had the expectation. I’ve dealt with the pressure and even the commentary; when I’m rolling up, it’s like, ‘It’s the defending champion… Can she do it?’

“That’s a pretty mind-boggling situation. It was really, really hard, and I’m really happy with how I conducted myself and composed myself on the track.”

Finucane’s latest gold medal, her second of the week, follows an immensely successful summer, in which she won three Olympic medals – the first British woman in 60 years to do so – including gold in the team sprint with Capewell and Marchant.

“I’ve got my jerseys, I’ve got my Olympic medals, and for me this was a bonus,” she said. Then came the time to reset again – Finucane is competing in the 500m time trial on Saturday – and with her Union Jack still tied around her neck, she dashed to the turbo trainer to warm down.

Sato beat Capewell to the final podium spot in the bronze medal ride-off.

Moments before Finucane’s victory, Josh Charlton witnessed his six-hour reign as the individual pursuit world record holder come to an end, but not without a valiant fight.

The Brit was only the third person in history to go below the four-minute mark in the event, clocking a new benchmark of 3:59.304 in qualifying. He then faced Italy’s Jonathan Milan in the final, who bettered the record by almost two tenths of a second. Charlton finished only one second down.

Afterwards, the 21-year-old was “over the moon” with the result, especially after struggling with chronic fatigue in the spring. “I really didn’t think I was going to get to Worlds this year,” he said. “[Milan] was winning stages of the Giro [d’Italia], and I was kind of in the bin physically. I got really ill. I didn’t even really want to be in the sport for a lot of parts of this year.”

Having fought back to fitness, Charlton stood proud with his silver medal. “I’d be an idiot to be disappointed right now,” he said. “I did a really good ride there, and he just had more gas than me, but I already knew he did. I just made him nervous for a few hours this afternoon, and to make a guy like him nervous for any amount of time is world class. I can be really proud of it.”

The individual pursuit also brought the final race for Dan Bigham with the national squad. The 33-year-old, a newly minted Olympic silver medallist, bowed out with bronze, in a tense battle with long-time teammate Charlie Tanfield.

“It was emotional,” Bigham said post-race, after receiving a guard of honour from the GB staff, who held bike wheels above his head for him to walk below. “I surprised myself a little bit. I definitely got myself in a nice hole at the back end [of the race] that I didn’t expect to have. It was quite nice to be able to do a good ride all things considered.

“When I was warming up, I didn’t feel great, but I’ve done enough of these damn things that you drag yourself kicking and screaming through it. It’s literally the last four minutes I’ll ride at this level, on this stage, and you just look up and you’re like, ‘It’s pretty damn cool.’”

Jess Roberts set herself the target of placing in the top eight in the women’s Omnium, but impressed throughout the four-race event, clawing her way from fifth going into the final points race to finish second overall.

“I’m really happy, but I’m also really annoyed,” she said afterwards. With four laps to go, Roberts trailed New Zealand’s Ally Wollaston by two points, with 10 available over the line. The Brit then suddenly dropped back from the field, looking down in dismay at her bike.

“My foot came out!” she said. “I bumped into [Denmark’s Amalie] Dideriksen, and I was like, ‘No! I can’t get it back in.’ I couldn’t contest the last sprint, so that was what I was really annoyed about, but I’m also really happy.”

Earlier this season, the 25-year-old rode her first elite Omnium at a Nations Cup round, and finished 19th. “I just wanted to come here and race well, and learn how to race bunch races,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to master this, and hopefully in this next four-year cycle [to the Los Angeles Olympics], I can continue that.”

Wollaston won the gold medal, her second in two days after taking victory in the elimination race on Thursday.

In the men’s kilometre time trial, Joe Truman set a new British record in winning the bronze medal. The 27-year-old, who went to the Paris Olympics as a reserve, shaved two tenths of a second off Chris Hoy’s previous best from 2007, clocking 58.669.

“It’s been six years trying hard the whole time,” said Truman, who won his last Worlds medal in 2018. “I’ve had two major injuries in that time, which set me back. This last year and half, I’ve had a really good run. I think I was unfortunate to miss out on getting a ride at the Games.

“To come here and do a good time and show the progress I’ve made in the last 18 months, I’m proud of myself.”

Silver in the kilo went to the world record holder, Jeffrey Hoogland, while the Dutchman’s compatriot, Harrie Lavreysen, won a fifteenth world title, the most of any track rider in the sport’s history.

Elsewhere, Spain’s Sebastián Mora won a hectic men’s point race, in which GB’s Mark Stewart finished sixth.

Great Britain’s women’s team pursuit squad planned for every eventuality in their UCI Track World Championships final against Germany, apart from the one in which they caught their opponents before the line.

“You never get a catch in a Worlds final,” smiled Katie Archibald afterwards. “I was looking at Cam [Meyer, the team’s coach] like, ‘We didn’t go over this!’ I was quite surprised.”

Still, it was with three laps remaining in the 16-lap race that the gun sounded, crowning Archibald and her teammates – Josie Knight, Anna Morris, Meg Barker and Jess Roberts, who swapped in for Barker in the first round – the world champions. The ride sealed a dominant two days for the squad, who qualified first by three seconds on Wednesday, caught their first round opponents, China, after the halfway point, and then cruised away against the Germans.

“We came out swinging, and I’m really quite happy that we did,” Archibald told Cycling Weekly. “We start quick in training all the time, and it still isn’t the plan. We train to get to 100%, so you can have this buffer at 80%, but obviously on race day, you get nervous, maybe you accidentally give 95%.

“All our training sessions have been really hard, we’ve been really struggling to get it off the line, and then it’s gone hot today, race kit on, race feeling on. That’s what’s tuned us into that result.”

Prior to the competition, Archibald said she was at 80% of her full physical ability, still recovering from a broken leg suffered in June. She raced all three rounds of the team pursuit, and didn’t falter once.

“A lot of pain is psychological, isn’t it?” she said. “Not that it’s not real, but you feel it go up and down with stress. That’s the treat of having something that you care about; it can let you tune into one feeling, and that one feeling, I guess, is the wheel in front of me, not the ankle below me.”

Racing as the defending champions, the British quartet drew out a buffer of more than two seconds after just four laps in the final, a gap that only got larger.

For Knight, the team went into the match-up with a “physical benefit” after only racing half of the first round. “But mentally, it was an odd one,” said the Paris Olympics bronze medallist. “From a confidence perspective, I’d almost liked to have gone the full 4km, to just see what we had. But it didn’t matter in the end, because we caught them [in the final].”

The victory marked a second world title for Barker, Morris and Knight – a sixth for Archibald – who were all part of the squad that won the rainbow jersey in Glasgow last year.

Was there any pressure coming back as defending champions? “People kept asking about defending, but nobody can take away the fact that we won last year, and it was just another opportunity to win again," Knight said. "We had nothing to earn. It was just another opportunity, and it feels really fantastic to have won.”

Earlier in the evening, GB’s men’s team pursuit squad were pipped to gold in their final against the hosts and reigning champions Denmark.

The quartet of Ollie Wood, Charlie Tanfield, Ethan Hayter and Josh Charlton started off fastest in Ballerup, but buoyed by the noise of the home crowds, the Danes fought back to win by three tenths of a second.

“It was only after I bailed after my second turn that I could hear it,” said Wood, who replaced first-round rider Rhys Britton in the final. “It’s actually quite a small crowd, but it seemed extremely loud, so I’ll give them that.”

The Brits qualified top on Thursday, two tenths of a second faster than the Danes, and despite getting quicker throughout the competition, were ultimately held off in the final.

Up against the defending champions, Tanfield said, the squad knew they were in for a "dogfight".

"It always is against those guys," he said. “We gave it absolutely everything in the final, but we just lost out a little bit at the finish. I think we got the most out of ourselves today, and that’s just how it is, isn’t it? You can’t win all the time.”

The home support maintained their fervour throughout the medal ceremony, long after the event had finished. As the winners' names were read out over the tannoy, they were drowned out by clapping. The noise, in fact, barely died off as the five Danes slowly squeezed into their new rainbow jerseys, and a flock of swan cuddly toys was awarded to all the medallists.

There were roars, too, from the Japanese media contingent, when they witnessed their first keirin world champion since 1987.

Kento Yamasaki, a rider who didn’t make the country’s Olympic squad this August, stunned the field when he won the event's final, beating Israel’s Mikhail Yakovlev and Colombia’s Kevin Quintero in a photofinish. The Olympic champion, Harrie Lavreysen, a 14-time world champion, took a shock exit in the semi-final, and finished eighth.

The Japanese fans were on their feet again later in the evening, waving hand-held fans in the air when Kazushige Kuboki won an animated men's scratch race.

The 35-year-old was one of a handful of riders who gained a lap on the field in the 60-lap race. He attacked down the back straight to hold off his opponents, and win his first world title in a career that dates back almost two decades.

New Zealand’s Ally Wollaston also won a maiden rainbow jersey, beating defending champion Lotte Kopecky (Belgium) in the women's elimination race.

“[Kopecky] prefers riding from the front, and I prefer riding at the back, so it worked perfectly for the both of us,” she told Cycling Weekly. “I knew going into the final lap that Lotte was going to be really strong, and when she kicked, I did think for a moment, ‘Oh God, I’m not going to be able to come over here.’ But I think with the dynamics of the track, it really benefits a rider coming round with the long straights, so I knew I just had to be patient and wait for the finish line to come.

"To be able to walk away with the rainbows is something I can’t even put into words.”

Great Britain’s Sophie Lewis finished 15th in the elimination race. Other British results on the night included strong showings from the squad’s two 20-year-old debutants, Noah Hobbs and Harry Ledingham-Horn, who placed sixth in the scratch race, and fourth in the keirin respectively.

“I’m surprised, to be fair,” Ledingham-Horn said. “Making the semis, I was really happy with that. That was a good day out. Then everything went right in the semi-final, and I was even competitive in the gold medal final, which is crazy, to be honest.”

Team sprint gold medallists Emma Finucane and Sophie Capewell cruised through to the semi-finals of the individual sprint competition, which will take place on Friday. Should the pair win their heats, they will set up an all-British final for the title.

A serial winner on the road, it might be time to get used to seeing Lorena Wiebes winning inside the velodrome, too.

The Dutchwoman competed in, and won, her first international track event at the UCI Track World Championships on Wednesday evening, holding off three-time Olympic champion Jennifer Valente (USA) in the scratch race.

The victory brought a career-first rainbow jersey for Wiebes, across all disciplines, as she plots a path towards the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.

Is she thinking about racing track at the next Games? “Yes that’s possible,” she told Cycling Weekly.

Although best known for her road sprinting exploits, the 25-year-old has won nine national track titles, three of which came in the scratch race. The event is not in the Olympic programme, but comes within the four-part Omnium, alongside the tempo, elimination and points races.

“The Omnium event is completely different to only the scratch race,” Wiebes said. “We have to see what’s coming these next couple of years. Maybe I first need to ride a full Omnium to fully decide what I want.

“I don’t really like the elimination race. That’s a big thing,” she laughed. “I have four years to get used to it, so we will see what the future brings. It’s somewhere on my mind.”

The Dutchwoman hovered near the back of the pack for most of her Track Worlds debut in Ballerup, Denmark. When the bell rang to signal the final lap of the 40-lap race, she darted to the front, putting three bike lengths into her rivals. She then bowed and shook her head in disbelief as she came across the line victorious.

“I expected that somebody will pass me still in the last lap, so that was surprising,” Wiebes said. “We did race scenarios during training, and we knew that if I was leading with one lap to go, it will be ideal for me. But it was really also instinct.

“I said to the coach before, ‘We need to do it through instinct, and not think too much, because anything can happen.’ I found a good wheel, and I felt with one and a half laps to go, I needed to start moving up more to the front. It worked out perfectly.”

Wiebes was only down for one event at this year's Track Worlds, meaning she now leaves with a 100% record. Her brief appearance, she explained, came because of proximity to her last road race, the Simac Ladies Tour, where she won three stages and the points classification.

“It was so close after Simac that you can have only a few days of rest, only spinning the legs. For me, it’s quite an ideal preparation. I didn’t have to do any training anymore, just keep the shape and continue to the next event,” she said.

Can we expect to see her racing more on the track in the future, as her SD Worx-Protime teammate Lotte Kopecky does? “We have to see if it’s possible with the road programme, of course. I’d like to show this jersey in some scratch races next year,” she said. “It’s possible, but you have to find a good balance for it.”

2025 UCI Track World Championships
Dates: Wednesday 22 October – Sunday 26 October
Where: Santiago, Chile
Events: 22
How to watch: BBC/TNT Sports (UK), FloSports (US) - full guide here

The Track Worlds Championships are taking place outside of Europe for the first time since Hong Kong hosted it in 2017 and return to South America for the first time since 2014 when it took place in Cali, Colombia. This is the fifth edition to be hosted by a South American country, and the first in Chile.

The Netherlands took the competition by the scruff of the neck on day one, winning all three events, and by the end of the third day had won another three. The unstoppable Harrie Lavreysen has landed his 17th, 18th and 19th world titles further cementing his position as the greatest male sprinter of all time. Few would bet against him in the men's sprint - an event he is currently all but unbeatable in.

His Dutch team have been the dominant force on the track since the build up to the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, and they show no sign of giving up that position.

The gold medals were spread out amongst the nations on day two with Ireland, Denmark, Italy and Germany all putting riders on the top step of the podium. On day three it was the turn of Great Britain who won two gold medals, one in the men's points race and one in the individual pursuit.

A year that follows an Olympic Games can also see 'transitional' teams compete, as Olympic champions set other objectives for the year, and young riders are brought into the team to give them experience years out from the next Games in Los Angeles, 2028.

To read more on all the events that will be taking place in Chile, read our guide to track cycling. Scroll down for a list of winners, riders to watch and medal table.

>>> Day one: Silver medals bittersweet for Great Britain on opening night

>>> Day two: I just didn't have the legs. Silver for Archibald on Worlds comeback

>>> Day three: Two golds for GB, but another three for the Netherlands

>>> Day four: Katie Archibald and Maddie Leach win Madison gold

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

Riders to watch

Emma Finucane (Great Britain)
The British sprinter continued her dominance of women's sprinting at last year's championships, winning the individual sprint and the team sprint (with Sophie Capewell and Katy Marchant), two of the four golds the British women brought home from event in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Harrie Lavreysen (Netherlands)
The Dutchman is considered the greatest track sprinter of all time, and he’s only 28. A former BMX rider, Harrie Lavreysen counts an unprecedented 16 track world titles and five Olympic gold medals, three of which he won in Paris.

Matt Richardson (Great Britain)
Following his post-Olympic nationality switch to Great Britain, Richardson had to sit out international competition for a period of time. He'll be desperate to get back into it and take the racing to Lavreysen, buoyed by his recent world record rider in Turkey.

Ally Wollaston (New Zealand)
Two world titles in Copenhagen last year propelled Wollaston to the top of women's track cycling. Prior to that, she won two medals at the Paris Olympics: silver in the team pursuit, and bronze in the Omnium.

Katie Archibald (Great Britain)
One of the most decorated riders in track racing returns to the boards for another major championships. With two Olympic golds, multiple world and European titles to her name, she will once again be the rider to watch in the women's endurance events.

Josh Tarling (Great Britain)
The Ineos Grenadiers time trial specialist is making his senior World Champs debut for Great Britain in Chile, but he won't be riding any events against the clock. Instead the Welshman will ride the Points race and Madison.

Lorena Wiebes (Netherlands)
The best women's sprinter (on the road) of the generation, perhaps ever, returns to defend her scratch race title. with 25 wins on the road this year, and two on gravel - including the recent world championships - few would bet against her defending her title.

There’s a step in Katie Archibald’s garden that makes her flinch each time she sets foot on it. “I do feel a bit sick, because I’ve got to go out the same step like every day,” she says. “This is so pathetic, but pretty much every day, I hold onto the handle and take a big, really slow step. It’s just any other step, but I just can’t get my head around how inconsequential an action it was, for such a consequential outcome.”

The inconsequential action she’s talking about came in June this year. One early summer’s day, Archibald walked out into her garden and tripped on the step that now haunts her. The fall was detrimental. She dislocated her ankle, broke her tibia and fibula, and tore two ligaments off the bone. On top of the injury list, the fall ruled out her hopes of going to the Paris Olympics, where she was targeting the Omnium, Madison and team pursuit, with realistic gold medal chances in all three events.

“I’ve had friends of friends ask ‘What really happened?’ because it sounds as weird to me as anybody else. The only phrasing is freak injury,” she says, and then takes herself back to the moment. “The way I fall dislocates my foot. The dislocation breaks both the bones. The bone break rips the ligaments, and it ends up with really an injury of great consequence.

“You know if you close your eyes, and you hold your hand there, and you know what your hand looks like, and then you open your eyes and you see your hand? It was eerie. I would close my eyes, because I had fallen over, and I know where my foot is, but then I open my eyes, and it’s not there anymore. It’s facing the wrong way.”

That sight marked the start of a challenging summer for Archibald, one punctuated by hospital appointments, mental battles and recovery milestones. This week, however, only four months after an injury that left her with a leg like “spaghetti in a bag”, the Scot is back racing, part of the GB squad for the Track World Championships in Denmark. It will be her first event since missing the Olympics in August.

Archibald was lying in a hospital gurney when she first heard Paris was off the cards. “I had a surgeon say to me, ‘I’ve spoken to a specialist, and by the way, you’re not going to go to the Olympics’,” the two-time gold medallist remembers. “Because it was so quick, I was like, ‘I don’t believe you.’ I just didn’t really at first.”

Throughout her career, Archibald has lived by the mantra of keeping her ambitions high and expectations low. She was aware of the extent of her injury – who wouldn’t be? – but held onto her faith and aimed to keep her name on the reserve list for Paris. “I had this glimmer of hope,” she says. That glimmer burned out swiftly in a conversation with the GB squad’s performance director, Stephen Park.

“Sparky actually said that they’d had medical advice, and so it would be negligence to essentially give me that hope, to put me on the non-travelling reserve list, because I would keep training and this would cause irreversible damage,” the 30-year-old says. The news came within 10 days of her fall, and to many, might have felt like an arrow through the heart. For Archibald, “it was really noticeable the weight that it lifted off my chest”.

“It was somebody else’s decision, and it didn’t feel like I was the one giving up. Since then, it’s all been a pretty steep trajectory upwards.”

Following the surgery, which involved plates and pins, the Scot spent six weeks in an orthotic boot that came up to her left knee. She got “really into” swimming, and continued to do upper body work in the gym, “but none of it felt like a cathartic release,” she says. “I’d lost being able to move properly. I’d lost my sense of community a little bit, because cycling is that community for me, and my team were off on training camps, off on holding games, and then off at the Games.”

While her teammates were competing in Paris, Archibald was at the Bisham Abbey National Sports Centre, 30 miles west of London, and 300 miles from the French capital. There, she trained inside the Intensive Rehabilitation Unit (IRU), where she worked through sequences of weight-bearing exercises on her leg. There were televisions throughout the building. Did she watch any of the Olympics? “I did watch it all,” she says.

“The only emotion I felt that I was uncomfortable with – the distasteful emotion, I suppose – was jealousy more than anything else,” she explains. “I could tell that I was being standoffish, and I could tell I wasn’t being a nice person to be around. When the racing actually started, and once I could just be immersed as a fan of the sport, that was the biggest escape. It just seemed really funny that the thing I was trying to avoid thinking about, which was my Olympic dream that wasn’t happening, the best thing to distract me from that was the Olympics.”

Training progress, at first, was slow. Prior to the Olympics, Archibald had begun receiving coaching from her brother, time trial record holder John Archibald, but she "canned [him] off" when the physios told her to go back to basics. "The training was things like trying to do a calf raise,” she says. “It took me fucking two months to be able to do a calf raise.”

Come the end of August, however, and Archibald was back on a bike outdoors. Her track teammates had returned from the Olympics with eight medals, but already the Paris Games was starting to slip into collective memory. Attention turned to the next major championships: the Worlds in Denmark. Team selection would be made at the start of October. It was the motivation Archibald needed.

“The way I planned out the progression to think I’ll make it for Worlds, I had these key turbo sessions that would give feedback on my Madison form, and some key track sessions that would give me feedback on my team pursuit form. Those are my two targets at the Worlds: team pursuit and Madison,” she says.

The plan called for immediate improvement. “It had to progress so rapidly that I knew the next week would need to be longer, or would need to be more power, or faster or something, that it almost wasn’t satisfying,” she says. “You’re like, ‘Good, I achieved the bare minimum, and now there’s just another opportunity for failure next time.’ I found it really hard to get that rush that you would normally get from nailing a session.”

Then, on the final day of September, her final session arrived. “And I fucking nailed it, if I’m honest” she grins. “It just felt like a graduation.”

Today, Archibald explains, she considers herself to be at 80% of her full ability. “With physical at 80%, I can still turn up with my technical and my tactical at 100%, so there’s still a lot on the table,” she says. More importantly, though, the former Olympic champion is “happier on the bike than I’ve been in a long time”.

“I just had a serious craving to get back to training, regardless of what result it would lead to, regardless of whether I’d be any good at it. I just really wanted to get back on my bike, back onto the routine, back onto that freedom of doing what you’re good at.

“Now that I’m able to push again, the fact that I can turn up to the track sessions as a contributor, not just a burden, and all the benefits that come with being part of a team that you love, I feel so much more aware of those elements that are making me happier on the bike.”

Four months have passed since the innocuous fall, and still her legs are not symmetrical; she’s missing muscle mass on her left calf, while the ankle is larger, from both the swelling and the metalwork.

“I’ve been showing it to people, I guess for a bit of sympathy or something, and I did that to my dad, and he looks at it and he goes, ‘Well, that leg’s not going to be ready in four weeks, is it?’ This would have been, say, three weeks ago. And I was like, ‘What’s wrong with you, man? I’m trying to go either way, so please, I don’t know why I showed you this shrivelled-up calf’,” she laughs. “Now, if I’m totally honest, I kind of wish I could get the other leg all tightened up and screwed in and nice and stiff.”

The scars will always remind Archibald of that day in June. So too will the step in her garden. But while the tile that she fell on may be daunting, the 30-year-old is unflinching about her future. She feels “super motivated” for the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028. She's also looking forward to working with a new coach, and is exploring university courses to develop herself off the bike.

“This feels very much like the start of a journey for me,” she says of this week’s World Championships. “It’s a major target – it kind of always is – but I know that as far as Worlds go, this won’t be the most competitive of the four-year cycle. I will be as competitive as I can be.”

Two-time Olympic champion Katie Archibald will return to racing next week at the UCI Track World Championships, her first competition since breaking her leg in June.

The 30-year-old fractured her tibia and fibula, dislocated her ankle, and tore two ligaments when she fell on a step in her garden a month before the Paris Olympics. She was forced to forego what would have been her third Games, instead dedicating herself to rest and recovery.

Almost four months on from the accident, Archibald has now been selected in the Great Britain squad for the Track World Championships in Ballerup, Denmark, scheduled for 16-20 October. She will join her teammates in the women's endurance squad who won bronze in the team pursuit in Paris – Josie Knight, Anna Morris and Jess Roberts – as well as Madison silver medallist Neah Evans, Meg Barker and Sophie Lewis.

"I'm thriving on the bike," Archibald wrote on Instagram last month. "You'll just have to wait and see."

Also part of the GB squad for this month's World Championships are the Olympic women's team sprint champions Katy Marchant, Sophie Capewell and Emma Finucane, the only British track gold medallists from Paris. The trio will compete for medals across the sprint disciplines, with Finucane out to defend her title in the individual sprint.

Olympic team pursuit silver medallists Ethan Hayter, Ollie Wood, Charlie Tanfield and Dan Bigham headline the men's endurance squad for the event. Bigham will compete in the individual pursuit at the championships, turning the final pedalstrokes in his journey with the national squad, before he turns to focus on his new role as head of engineering at WorldTour team Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe.

Among the experienced riders, three 20-year-olds are set for their elite Worlds debuts in Denmark. Ineos Grenadiers rider Josh Tarling, a double junior European track champion, is part of the men’s endurance squad alongside Noah Hobbs of Groupama-FDJ; while three-time national champion Harry Ledingham-Horn will compete in the sprint events.

Double Paris medallist Jack Carlin has opted to forego this year's World Championships, as have his Olympic-silver-medal-winning team sprint partners Hamish Turnbull and Ed Lowe.

"While some riders rest after a heavy season, this gives other riders an opportunity to step up and stake a claim for a podium squad place," said the squad's performance director, Stephen Park.

"The world championships after the Olympic Games is always an exciting mix as our Olympic medalists are riding high from a successful Games and will hopefully end the season with some more medals to add to their palmares," Park continued.

The full 23-rider GB squad for the UCI Track World Championships is below. The competition begins inside the Ballerup Super Arena next Wednesday 16 October, and runs until Sunday afternoon.

Women’s Endurance
Katie Archibald
Meg Barker
Neah Evans
Josie Knight
Sophie Lewis
Anna Morris
Jess Roberts

Men’s endurance
Dan Bigham
Rhys Britton
Josh Charlton
Ethan Hayter
Noah Hobbs
Mark Stewart
Charlie Tanfield
Josh Tarling
Ollie Wood

Women’s sprint
Sophie Capewell
Emma Finucane
Katy Marchant
Lowri Thomas

Men’s sprint
Harry Ledingham-Horn
Hayden Norris
Joe Truman
Marcus Hiley (travelling reserve)

No brakes, no gears - track cycling is a discipline blessed with a beautiful simplicity. Or, is it?

Whilst the bikes might seem uncomplicated (until you've spent hours trackside debating gear inches), the competitions played out on the boards of a velodrome can be a bit more complicated than "first to the line wins."

We've put together a guide to track racing, to help explain the various races you can expect to see at the major championships each year.

The next major track cycling event is the UCI Track World Championships in Santiago, Chile that runs from 22-26 October 2025. If you want to know how to watch, read out guide.

Team pursuit

The team pursuit has four riders cover a distance of four kilometres, which is 16 laps of the track. They have to ride as a unit to give each other enough shelter to recover while not on the front.

The qualifying rounds see teams ride the usual distance but they are the only ones on the track. Whereas, after the qualifying, two teams start at the same time on opposite sides of the track with the winners being the ones who post the fastest time.

The time is taken from the third rider to cross the line, therefore it is common for the fourth rider to give his or her all and then swing off with around a lap to go. This would usually be the rider who gets the team up to speed from the start.

Riders line up next to each other on the pursuit lines on the home and back straights with the first rider in the lowest position. The lowest rider starts in a start gate too with the other riders being held by mechanics or coaches. The first rider's job is to get the riders up to speed and over their gear. This usually takes just over a lap.

After this, the riders will take around one lap on the front of the train before swinging up the track, usually on a corner so they can use the banking to not lose speed but naturally drop to the back of the group due to them riding further. These have to be perfectly executed. If a rider misses the slipstream of the last man in the train it can cause all kinds of problems with riders having to spend a lot of energy to get back to their team-mate's wheel, throwing the entire setup out of balance.

There are points where one team can catch the other on the track. If this is the case then the caught team must get out of the way of the faster team as they continue to try and set the fastest time possible. If it is a race for a medal, if a team is caught the race is over and is usually referred to as 'making the catch'.

A pursuit bike is a standard frame typically ridden with front and rear discs (on an indoor velodrome) and tri-bars. Gearing is typically between 104 -120 inches.

The world records are currently held by Italy in the men's race and Germany in the women's.

Omnium

The Omnium is a competition made up of aggregated results from a series of four race, all held on the same day.

The one-day format, which also no longer includes the timed events (individual pursuit, flying lap and kilo / 500m time trials) is relatively new, having been changed after the 2016 Rio Olympics.

It is now entirely endurance-focused, including the scratch, tempo, elimination and points race.

Riders accumulate points as they race, with the winner in each race awarded 40 points, 38 for second place, 36 for third - and so on. The points race comes last, and there are double points for the final sprint. The rider with the most points after four events wins.

Here's how those four races work:

Tempo race

This bunch race features a sprint on every lap after the first four – the first rider over the line wins a point, and any rider who laps the field gains 20. Losing a lap to the main field sees a rider lose 20 points. The World Championship tempo race is run over 10km for men and 7.5km for women.

Scratch race

On the face of it, pure and simple - first rider over the line wins. Some riders may aim to break away and lap the field, whilst other will hold out for a sprint. The men race 15km and the women 10km.

Elimination race

Often called the "Devil Take the Hindmost", or the Devil for short, in this race there is a sprint every two laps. The last rider over the line is eliminated until the final lap where the remaining riders fight it out for victory.

Points race

A long one – 25km for men and 20km for women, but the distance varies at other events. Every ten laps, there is an intermediate sprint. The top four riders score points - 5 for the win, 3, 2, and 1. The last sprint is awarded double points. Lapping the field gains a rider 20 points.

Individual sprint

Match sprints are contested between two riders who cover three laps of the track. The first rider over the line wins the race, best of three races wins the match. The top 16 riders qualify for the knockout stages with a flying 200-metre time trial.

Tactics play a huge part in the sprint racing. Track stands – where the riders come to a standstill in a bid to get their rival to the front to lead out the sprint – are common, as are sudden turns of speed.

Team sprint

The team sprint sees a team of three riders race against each other over three laps of the track. The first rider gets the trio out of the start gate and up to speed before peeling off after a lap.

The leading rider must complete a lap and swing up in a designated zone 15 metres on either side of the finish line. The second rider takes over the pace for the middle lap before the third rider finishes off.

The quickest team over the three laps wins. One false start is allowed but the team must get away cleanly at the second attempt. The women's team sprint has pairs of competitors racing.

Keirin

The keirin heralds from Japan, where professional keirin racing is the equivalent of horse racing, drawing in huge crowds to gamble on the outcome.

The common misconception is that keirin means to fight – actually it means ‘racing wheels’.

It's a race for the sprinters. The riders line up side-by-side on the pursuit line and jump in behind a motorised pace bike, commonly called a derny, as it comes past. The riders’ starting position is determined by drawing lots beforehand. Position number one is at the bottom of the track and that rider should take the spot directly behind the pacer unless another rider beats them to it.

The riders will sometimes jockey for the position they want behind the pacer, and it’s common to see a few nudges between riders as they fight for the best wheel to follow. What they mustn’t do is pass the derny that slowly builds its speed (the pace bike rider judges the speed through his pedalling cadence) to 50kph for the men, 45kph for the women. With two-and-a-half laps to go the pacer swings down off the track and the sprint begins.

From here riders will use a variety of tactics; leading from the front, sitting in the wheels, or leaving it late with a burst of speed.

Sir Chris Hoy told us: "Tactics will depend on the type of race it is. Sometimes it will be a flat-out sprint for two and a half laps, while other times there’ll be a bit of hesitation, but no more than half a lap of waiting before the first rider will go for it.

“If you hit it the front hard, with a lap and a half to go, then not many folks will get round you. It’s about timing your attack correctly and holding on to the line. You have a plan A, and a plan B if they don’t work you ride on instinct and react to the situation around you.”

Madison

The Madison has long been considered the most complex but absorbing race on the track.

Named after Madison Square Garden in New York where it was first made popular. Teams of two riders compete together to score points at the intermediate sprints, held every 10 laps, (5pts, 3pts, 2pts, 1pt to the first four), and gain laps by attacking.

One member of each team is ‘in the race' at any one time, while the other circles at the top of the banking. The riders switch over to give each other a rest - or perhaps to put the better sprinter in as a sprint lap approaches.

The rider must touch his team-mate to change over but usually this is done with a hand-sling to propel the other into the race. The team that covers the most laps wins, with points only counting to separate riders who finish on the same number of laps.

Kilometre time trial

The simplest, purest track race - which makes it all the more baffling why the UCI decided to eliminate it from the Olympic programme in 2016 when asked to drop an event to make way for BMX.

The time trials continue at World Cup and World Championship events but with the sprinters focusing on the sprint and Keirin races - which are Olympic disciplines - instead, it's lost its lustre. The riders start individually and the quickest rider over one kilometre is the winner.

Individual pursuit

The races are over 4,000m. In qualifying each rider covers the distance alone and is timed – very much like a time trial. The best finishers are then seeded and take part in a knock-out for the medals, starting on opposite sides of the track.

The fastest two riders compete for gold, the third and fourth quickest go for bronze. If one rider catches another, he or she is automatically the winner, otherwise results are decided by times.

Great Britain has qualified a full track cycling squad for the Paris Olympics this summer. 

The final qualification rankings were confirmed on Tuesday by the UCI, with GB meeting the quota criteria in every event. 

As a result, 14 British riders, seven per gender, will travel to Paris, France in August to compete at the Games. The squad will also be allowed to pull in one male and one female athlete from another cycling discipline, such as road, mountain bike or BMX, meaning up to 16 athletes will ride on the track.

It is the first time GB will be present in every track event since London 2012, having failed to meet the qualification requirements for the women's team sprint at both Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020. 

With no more major track competitions remaining before the Olympics, the GB coaches will now select the riders to compete in Paris. The full squad, containing additional reserve riders, is expected to be announced near the end of June. 

There are six track cycling medal events at the Olympics for both the men and women: three sprint events (team sprint, individual sprint and keirin) and three endurance events (team pursuit, Madison and Omnium). 

The qualification criteria drew on points gathered at the 2023 UCI Track World Championships, the last two Continental Championships, and the best two results from UCI Nations Cup rounds in 2023 and 2024. 

To qualify in the sprint events, GB had to rank in the top eight countries in the team sprint. The women's squad, who won the opening two Nations Cup rounds this year, qualified second, behind the world champions Germany. The men's squad qualified fifth. 

Two of the three team sprint riders in each gender will be selected for the individual sprint and keirin. 

In the endurance events, GB had to qualify among the top 10 countries in the team pursuit, granting them places in the Madison and Omnium as well. 

The men's team pursuit squad, having crashed out of last year’s World Championships, qualified seventh, thanks to gold medals at the European Championships and two of this year's Nations Cups. The women's team pursuit squad had a more assured qualifying period, ranking second overall, behind New Zealand. 

The UCI will now confirm the final quota places in writing to each of the countries. The full Olympic track rankings can be found on the governing body’s website. 

The track cycling events at the Paris Olympics will take place between 5-11 August at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome, southwest of the city. 

Having conquered the team pursuit on Thursday, Ethan Hayter added another rainbow jersey to his wardrobe with victory in the men’s omnium at the UCI Track World Championships. 

The Brit, who also won the event at last year’s championships, looked assured across all four races, crossing the finish line with a 20-point winning margin. 

“It’s incredible," Hayter told Cycling Weekly inside the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines track centre. "I think it’s going to take some time to sink in.

“It’s one of the hardest things I’ve done,” the 24-year-old added. “The bankings are higher and the transitions are quite steep, so the speed is on and off a bit more. It just makes it really tactical.

“I think over the four events, by the end of the last race, I was probably the strongest,” he continued. “I knew I could control the race.” 

Last year, Hayter won two events in the omnium, before drawing out a resounding 54-point swing in the final race. The Brit cut his victory finer this time round, finishing fourth, second and second respectively in the scratch, tempo and elimination races.

In the dying moments of the points race, France’s Benjamin Thomas dug deep to gain a lap on the field, leapfrogging his opponents to take the silver medal. Aaron Gate (New Zealand), the star of the Commonwealth Games earlier this year, finished in third. 

Great Britain’s Josie Knight also claimed her second medal of the championships with bronze in the 3,000m individual pursuit. The 25-year-old set a new British record in qualifying, clocking a time of 3-20.792, before going on to beat Olympic gold medallist Mieke Kröger (Germany) in the race for third.

“Positional discipline went out the window,” the Brit said of her final few laps. “I was just trying to get it home as fast as I could. So then to hear the gun go, and it was me, I was obviously delighted.”

An Olympic silver medallist, Knight was part of the quartet who came second in the team pursuit on Thursday, losing out to Italy. “To be so close to a world champion's jersey in the TP was a little disappointing,” she said. “This is only my second time riding an individual event here, so to get an individual medal, I’m over the moon.”  

Germany’s Franziska Brauße won the gold medal in the event, while Bryony Botha (New Zealand) came second. 

Laura Kenny crashes out of Madison

The British duo of Neah Evans and Laura Kenny finished fifth in the women's Madison, after the latter fell hard on the boards in the final few laps. 

The event, won by Belgians Lotte Kopecky and Shari Bossuyt, started tensely, with two early crashes bringing the racing to a halt. A third crash followed after the restart, before the French found their groove and began stretching out a lead over the field. 

In the second half of the 120-lap race, the British pair chiselled into the deficit, climbing to second on the scoreboard. The Belgians then gained a lap on the bunch, before Kenny, the reigning Olympic champion, collided with a New Zealand rider and slid down the banking. 

“Madisons are notoriously chaotic,” Kenny's partner Evans told Cycling Weekly after the race. “And that one especially so.

“There were a lot of interesting moves from other teams, resting riders who are kind of in the race,” the Scot continued, “so you need eyes in the back of your head.

“I was confident that we could get the final sprint, and then obviously an error from another team just cost us [the opportunity to take the bronze medal]. 

"Bitterly frustrating, but that’s Madison racing.”

France prove they're the fastest

In the women’s 500m time trial, France's Marie-Divine Kouamé sent the home crowds into a frenzy, beating six-time world champion Emma Hinze to the gold medal with a time of 32.835. 

The 20-year-old's blistering ride came less than 24 hours after her compatriot Mathilde Gros claimed France’s first title of the championships, prevailing in the women’s sprint.

“Yesterday, when Mathilde won, we were in front of the telly crying," Kouamé told the press after the race. "We thought it was incredible, and honestly I dreamed of this race.

“Now I just want to get back to training to come back and win the 500m, the keirin, the sprint, everything," the French rider added. 

The defending champion, Germany’s Lea Sophie Friedrich, failed to make the eight qualifying spots, while Brits Emma Finucane and Lauren Bell, who won bronze in the team sprint on Wednesday, placed 11th and 12th, ruling them out of the final.

Likewise, there will be no British riders in the men’s sprint finals on Sunday, after both Jack Carlin and Hamish Turnbull were knocked out in their heats.

Great Britain added two more medals to their haul at the UCI Track World Championships, with an awe-inspiring gold in the men’s team pursuit and silver in the women's event. 

Ethan Hayter, Dan Bigham, Ethan Vernon and Ollie Wood stormed to the country's first victory in the men’s team pursuit since 2018, beating Filippo Ganna’s Italy by two tenths of a second in the final. 

The British quartet started slower than their opponents, but quickly found their rhythm, shifting seamlessly through turns to stop the clock at 3-45-829. 

Speaking after the race, Hayter told Cycling Weekly he was “quite confident” the team would win, having bettered Italy’s time twice on Wednesday. 

“I tried to say to the others, you know, we qualified pole position and it’s very rare the winner of the qualifier doesn’t win the Worlds,” the 24-year-old added. “I tried to rub [my confidence] off on the others.”

After his title-winning debut in the team pursuit, Bigham couldn't stop grinning. “I don’t think I really put a foot wrong," the former Hour Record holder said. "I backed myself and it was an absolute dream.

"I don’t think we could’ve done a huge amount better."

In the women's team pursuit final, it was the Italians who came out on top with a time of 4-09-770. The British women, who clocked the fastest time in round one earlier in the day, lost a second in the first few laps, and were ultimately unable to overcome the deficit. 

“We pushed really hard to get to that final,” Olympic silver medalist Josie Knight told Cycling Weekly after the race. “It’s just bittersweet to come away with silver and not gold.” 

Neah Evans, another member of the squad that finished second in Tokyo 2020, said: “I think at one point I said if we came away with a medal, we’d take it.

“As a team we rode really well. We had Meg [Barker], and then Anna [Morris] stepped in, a huge unknown for her, and she really rose to the occasion. Katie [Archibald] has just been phenomenal,” the Scot added. 

“It’s been challenging, and there are so many positives we can take from it. It’s really exciting for the future; [we have a] new coach, there’s some fresh faces on the squad. I can’t wait to see what we can do with a bit more time working together.”

The Danish men and French women took home the bronze medals in the team pursuit, the latter claiming their country’s first podium at the home championships.

The Dutch get back to winning ways

In the men’s keirin, Harrie Lavreysen won his third consecutive title, outsprinting fellow Dutchman Jeffrey Hoogland down the home straight. “I was feeling really good today,” the 10-time world champion told Cycling Weekly. “Yesterday we lost the team sprint title, so I was really hoping to get the jersey.

“I would’ve really hated it if I couldn’t win a jersey this year, so I was really happy with the win.”

Great Britain’s Jack Carlin didn’t qualify for the keirin final, and finished seventh overall.

19-year-old Dylan Bibic (Canada) won his first senior world title in the 15km scratch race. Welshman Rhys Britton, who came third a year ago, couldn’t hold the pace on the final lap, eventually crossing the line in 14th. 

In the women’s elimination race, Lotte Kopecky (Belgium) went one better than her result last year to claim her third rainbow jersey on the track. Despite being involved in a crash early on in the event, Great Britain’s Sophie Lewis hung on to place sixth. 

Elsewhere, Sophie Capewell (Great Britain) bowed out in the quarterfinals of the women’s sprint, losing her opening two battles against France’s Mathilde Gros. The Frenchwoman will be joined by Laurine van Riessen (Netherlands), Lea Sophie Friedrich and the defending world champion Emma Hinze (Germany) in Friday’s semifinals. All four women convincingly won their heats 2-0. 

Great Britain claimed a batch of bronze medals in the women’s scratch race, women’s team sprint and men’s team sprint on the opening day of the UCI Track World Championships. 

“I’m honestly so happy,” Jess Roberts told Cycling Weekly after her third place in the 10km scratch race. “You always dream of getting a medal, and the scratch race can go either way.”

With five laps to go, the 23-year-old charged to the front of the pack, but couldn’t hold off Italy’s Martina Fidanza who retained her scratch race title. Maike van der Duin (Netherlands) earned herself the silver medal for the second year running. 

For Roberts, her bronze medal came with a deeper significance. “My grandad passed away on Saturday, so this is a race for him,” she said. “I just wanted to get to that line and get that medal for him.”

In the men’s sprint, the Australians stopped the Netherlands from winning five world titles on the bounce, clocking a blistering time of 41.6 seconds over three laps. As he signed rainbow jerseys, Matthew Richardson described the race as being “very hard but enjoyable”. 

The 23-year-old, a bronze medal winner in 2020, added: “Looking at the season we’ve had, [our] confidence was reasonable, but we didn’t let that get the better of us. You know, you’ve got to have some self belief.”

The British trio of Ali Fielding, Hamish Turnball and Olympic silver medalist Jack Carlin came out on top in their bronze medal race against Germany.

“The boys turned up and they exceeded expectations," Carlin told Cycling Weekly. “If anything, I was the weakest part of that team."

For the third consecutive year, the German women ruled over the team sprint. The highly decorated Lea Sophie Friedrich, Pauline Grabosch and Emma Hinze set a new world record of 45.983 seconds in the first round, before going on to better it with a 45.967 in their title-clinching ride.

The British women’s sprint team, who earned a historic first medal at last year’s championships, repeated their successes with another bronze medal in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, winning the play-off by eight thousandths of a second. 

“I don’t really remember much of last year,” laughed Sophie Capewell after the race, before turning the attention to the medal around her neck. “It’s pretty special. I feel quite privileged to do it with these two [Emma Finucane and Lauren Bell], especially because it’s their first Worlds. That’s quite an achievement in itself.”

Great Britain book gold medal race in team pursuit

Earlier in the day, the British team pursuit teams comfortably secured their spots in Thursday’s finals. 

Ethan Hayter, Dan Bigham, Ethan Vernon and Ollie Wood stunned the field to finish top in qualifying, narrowly beating the Italians with a time of 3-48-09. The Brits then faced New Zealand in the first round and won by almost two seconds, qualifying for Thursday’s gold medal race against Italy. Australia and Denmark will face off for the bronze medal. 

Great Britain’s women’s team, made up of Katie Archibald, Neah Evans, Megan Barker and Josie Knight, finished second in qualifying and will face France in round one on Thursday afternoon. 

Australia’s women’s team qualified in fourth, while Canada and the United States were the final two of the eight teams to go through to the first round. 

It was another action packed day on the boards at the Jean-Stablinski Velodrome in Roubaix with several rainbow jerseys handed out.

The finals on the second day of competition were the men's team pursuit, men's scratch, men's keirin, women's team pursuit and the women's elimination race.

Great Britain added to their bronze on day one to take three more bronze in both the men's and women's team pursuits as well as the men's scratch race.

Ethan Hayter along with Ethan Vernon, Oliver Wood and Charlie Tanfield road in the bronze final against Denmark. It was exceptionally close throughout the run of 4000 metres but a huge turn from Matias Malmberg on the Danish team ripped his own riders to shreds.

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This meant that Denmark, who were already down to the minimum of three riders, had huge gaps between their men, so Great Britain could ease to a win with a gap of just under two seconds. 

Afterwards, Wood said: "We just need to keep doing what we’re doing really. We’ve got the personnel, there are just a few things we need to piece together. 

"I think we did a good performance today, I mean two of the lads haven’t even put their leg over their track bike since they got off at the Olympics, so that’s positive, and we’ve not ridden together since the Games. 

"We’ll just keep doing what we’re doing and focusing on what we need to do, and hopefully results will come."

The men's final fighting for gold and the rainbow jersey were Olympic champions and world record holders Italy against a resurgent home nation of France.

Italy started exceptionally fast thanks to a big turn by the time trial world champion Filippo Ganna. France did come back at them though, taking the lead and pulling their gap out to two tenths of a second, but Italy came back again with Ganna playing a key role.

The lead continued to bounce back and forth for the next couple of laps until it was time for Ganna's huge turn. Ganna's power was too much for France and by the end Italy smashed their opponents by just over two seconds.

Simone Consonni, Liam Bertazzo and Jonathan Milan also put in an immense ride to bring the whole run together but it looked as though Ganna did the biggest turns.

In the women's event the Brits went up against Canada in the bronze medal final. With Katie Archibald, Megan Barker, Neah Evans and Josie Knight going all out to take it.

In the end, it was a pretty one sided looking event on the time sheets with Great Britain taking the bronze medal by over five seconds on the Canadian team.

It was a similarly strong showing by Olympic champions and world record holders Germany when they faced Italy in the gold medal final. They won by just under five seconds with the Italians still picking up a silver medal to add to the list.

In the men's scratch race it was all about tactics in what was a very nervous race. After a few half-hearted skirmishes, it was American rider Gavin Hoover who broke away solo. He didn't have much of a gap but no-one wanted to make the effort to catch him.

Finally, on the last lap the huge surge in speed came with French rider Donavan Grondin leading it out from one and a half laps to go. Nobody could get round Grondin as he lead the peloton past Hoover on the home straight to take the rainbow jersey in his home nation with a huge roar from the crowd.

He just managed to hold off the late push from Belgian rider, Tuur Dens as well as British rider, Rhys Britton who took silver and bronze respectively.

Britton said after the race: "It’s a big thing to be here, and to medal is pretty big as well. I’m bouncing to be honest with you, I wasn’t really expecting a medal at my first World Championships, and to be able to do that is pretty special."

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Arguably the main event of the evening, the men's Keirin final, went the way we all expected with a fight between the Dutch megastars of Harrie Lavreysen and Jeffrey Hoogland with Lavreysen once again getting the better his fellow countryman ahead of Russian Mikhail Iakovlev.

But the race was marred with a big crash between Japan's Koyu Matsui and Suriname's Jair Tjon En Fa with Matsui having to be taken to hospital on a stretcher.

The other final of the evening was the always exciting women's elimination race with a star packed field including the likes of Lotte Kopecky (Belgium) and the most followed female WorldTour cyclist on social media, Letizia Paternoster (Italy).

And it was Paternoster who was able to out-last all of her competitors with the race coming down to a two-up sprint with Kopecky. The 22-year-old Italian was clearly full of joy and disbelief afterwards as she covered her mouth and the tears began to fall.

American star Jennifer Valente took the bronze medal in an epic race.

Day three kicks off far earlier than the first two with the first events taking place at 1pm French time but all the finals once again come in the evening slot starting at 6:30pm.

British Cycling have announced the 19 riders who will be taking part in the endurance and sprint events at the upcoming UCI Track World Championships in Roubaix, France.

The Championships will be taking place in the indoor velodrome next to the famous outdoor one used in the Monument Classic, Paris-Roubaix, between October 20 and 24.

The team representing Great Britain and Northern Ireland has been announced by British Cycling with eight days to go until the championships begin.

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In the endurance events there is no surprise that the Katie Archibald is in the team after she took three titles at the recent UEC European Championships at the Tissot Velodrome in Grenchen, Switzerland. 

Those were the scratch, omnium and madison with Neah Evans, who has also been selected. Evans also won bronze in the elimination race. Megan Barker, Ella Barnwell and Josie Knight are the other three riders in the women's endurance squad.

Ethan Hayter comes into the fold after an incredible season on the road that saw him take eight wins including the overall title at the Tour of Norway and second overall at the Tour of Britain. Hayter also won the Olympic silver medal in the madison in Tokyo this summer. 

Ethan Vernon, who will be joining Belgian WorldTour team Deceuninck - Quick-Step, on the road in 2022, will also ride, as will Charlie Tanfield, Rhys Britton, Oliver Wood and Kian Emadi in the men's endurance squad.

Charlie Tanfield will hope to continue a great fight back in the team pursuit after his crash in the Olympics, where he lost touch with his team-mates early on before getting crashed into by the Danish squad. Tanfield had been a last minute change to the squad after Ed Clancy had to pull out with injury.

Since then he was part of a team that won bronze at the European Championships with his three team-mates, two of which will join him in Roubaix.

In the sprint competitions, British Cycling will be sending four men and women to the championships with Hayden Norris, Ali Fielding, Joe Truman and Hamish Turnbull in the men's squad and Lauren Bate, Sophie Capewell, Blaine Ridge-Davis and Milly Tanner in the women's.

While it is hard to see past the Dutch in the men's and women's sprint events, this crop of British talent will be hoping to put on a good showing on the boards of Northern France.

British team for the UCI Track World Championships 2021 in Roubaix

Men’s Endurance

Rhys Britton
Kian Emadi
Ethan Hayter
Charlie Tanfield
Ethan Vernon
Oliver Wood

Women’s Endurance

Katie Archibald
Megan Barker
Ella Barnwell
Neah Evans
Josie Knight

Men’s Sprint

Hayden Norris
Ali Fielding
Joe Truman
Hamish Turnbull

Women’s Sprint

Lauren Bate
Sophie Capewell
Blaine Ridge-Davis
Milly Tanner

The UCI has announced that Roubaix will hold the World Track Championships in October 2021, but sadly not on the iconic velodrome that springs to mind.  

Roubaix's most famous velodrome is the outdoor track where the Monument Paris-Roubaix finishes, after covering huge stretches of cobbles over North-eastern France.

The venue being used in this year's Worlds is the nearby indoor track, Vélodrome Couvert Régional Jean-Stablinski or as it's locally known 'Le Stab', between October 20-24. 

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This was not the original pick by the UCI though. This year's event was meant to take place in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan between October 13-17 but it had to be cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Paris-Roubaix has also been postponed in 2021 due to coronavirus, now taking place on October 3 rather than its usual slot in early April. 

The track Worlds haven't been held on an outside venue since 1994, when the event was hosted by Palermo, Italy at the Velodromo Paolo Borsellino.

On the new host for the 2021 event, UCI president David Lapartient said: "I would like to congratulate the Roubaix organising committee, led by the FFC and its President, Michel Callot, and all the authorities involved, for the quality of their candidature file. 

"Roubaix has long been a fabled location on the international cycling scene thanks to the famous Paris-Roubaix Classic. Its name will now be associated with the history of the UCI Track Cycling World Championships. 

"I am convinced that the magnificent Jean-Stablinski velodrome will showcase an exceptional event."

The track Worlds is the first major competition on the boards after the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, as riders battle for the coveted rainbow jerseys. 

There will also be riders looking for revenge with Denmark's male team pursuit team keen to retain their world title and maybe retake the world record that was broken by Italy in the Olympic final. 

Other riders such as Laura Kenny and Katie Archibald may be heading to northern France, hoping to add rainbows to their gold at the Olympic Games where they absolutely dominated the Madison field, winning by over 40 points. 

Elinor Barker showed she is “pretty close” to the form of her life entering the run-up to the Tokyo Olympics, as she claimed Britain’s only gold of the Track World Championships in Berlin.

Barker took two laps on the field in the points race to claim the rainbow jersey in style ahead of American Jernnifer Valente and Norwegian Anita Yvonne Stenberg

The beaming Welshwoman said: “I really wanted to get away but it never felt like there was a defining attack. At some point I just looked around and there were two or three people there.”

And although the 2017 points race World Champion seemed to make both laps up with relative ease that belied the effort involved. “I wanted to have some more energy to try and at least get involved in another sprint after taking a lap but I just had absolutely nothing left I was just seeing stars.”

However, she said that she would have “much rather” won the Madison. She rode that yesterday but saw her medal hopes disappear after partner Neah Evans crashed. Though she said she was happy with how she rode but that sometimes medals were hard to come by in the “unpredictable” event.

Barker’s gold, which took Britain to four medals at the Worlds, the same total as last year, was a fillip to the team that had struggled for results in Berlin.

But Barker said she felt no extra pressure to perform to lift Britain’s medal tally. “Everybody really backs each other. We really want each other to win, but I certainly didn't go into this thinking, ‘Oh I need to win because we haven’t won any’. I don’t’ think about that at all. I just want to win every race that I enter,” she said.

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The result was further confirmation that the 25-year-old is continuing to develop as a rider. She had spent several years getting podiums but few wins in individual events at major meets until that points World Championships win in 2017. She then followed that up with a rainbow jersey in the scratch last year.

“I feel like I'm in a place now where I can take bigger risks because I'm not that interested in medals. I’m far more interested in winning. That sometimes means that you can use a tactic that might mean that you have to contend, I'm not too scared of that anymore,” she said.

In addition Barker has broken the curse of having her parents, Graham and Sue, at the World Championships in the stands. “I almost told them not to come this week because they've only come to the ones where I’ve not won anything,” she said.

Danish rider Michael Mørkøv has said he felt "guilty" that he may have spread the coronavirus to his Danish team-mates at the track World Championships after having left the UAE Tour where there were two suspected cases.

Mørkøv has been cleared to race after the UCI said it had been "guaranteed" that he had not been in contact with the two individuals suspected to have the virus at the UAE Tour.

Mørkøv said his “first thought” when he heard about the virus at the UAE Tour was that he’d spread it to his team-mates. “You think OK they just made a world record we were hugging each other a thousand times,” he said. “I was, of course, feeling really guilty that I had brought this virus to other people. Team-mates, of course. It’s not a nice feeling, even though I couldn’t have done anything about it.”

The Deceuninck - Quick-Step rider was give clearance to race as the Department of Health in Abu Dhabi, where the riders, staff and press from the UAE Tour have been quarantined, confirmed that 167 of the tests conducted so far have come back negative for the Covid-19 virus.

However, the department did not specify how many of the 133 riders that completed the UAE Tour were included in the 167 negative tests or whether the two suspected cases were among them.

It said it was “still monitoring the condition” of the remaining people that had been quarantined and that their test results were expected within a few hours.

Mørkøv raced four stages of the UAE Tour before traveling to the track World Championships in Berlin and has been under quarantine in his hotel rooms since news of the outbreak in the UAE broke.

Just a day after racing in the desert Mørkøv was inside the velodrome celebrating with his Danish team-mates as they lowered the team pursuit world record for the third time in 48 hours.

It was late into the evening that news of the two suspected cases of coronavirus at UAE Tour broke. The Arabian authorities swiftly cancelled the race’s remaining two stages and put the riders, staff and press under quarantine.

“That was really unfortunate news, but I went to bed and when I woke up the next morning I was in contact with my coach, him and I decided it was better to stay in the room for safety reasons,” Mørkøv said. “Personally I wouldn't be feeling well if I jeopardised anybody with the risk of bringing this virus around”

The Danish rider said spending a total of 34 hours alone in his room wasn’t as bad as it might first appear. “It hasn't really been boring. I've been talking with all of you guys, messages calls, family or whatever. Obviously I've been on the phone waiting for positive response. I had a lot of things in my mind to do but I didn't get to any of it.” He also spent some time training on rollers and said it wasn’t much different to other times wherein the days before races he’s had to train inside due to poor weather.

The Deceuninck - Quick-Step rider said: "I'm reading the news about the guys sitting around for 14 days and we know all about the ship in Japan. That must be horrible compared to what I've done." The UCI opted not to test Mørkøv for the virus while it waited for the results of the test in UAE.

He is set to ride the World Championship Madison tomorrow and he said that if anything he felt the time spent under quarantine might have a positive effect on his performance. “I'm even more motivated for a good race tomorrow than I was before I came here. Now I feel really privileged I get to race,” he said.

He and Danish Cycling Federation president Henrik Jess Jensen both said they were happy with the way the sports governing body the UCI had handled the situation.

Jensen said: “I think it’s a world organisation and you have to be secure with what is going on all over. It has to be forefront of the cycling. I am quite satisfied even though you are impatient and want fast answers, even this morning we have being having a lot of coffee. But now we are feeling good.”

American Ashton Lambie is confident he can break Filippo Ganna’s new individual pursuit world record time when he travels to altitude in April.

Lambie is set to go to Bolivia with British track team Huub-Wattbike to mount an assault on the individual pursuit, team pursuit and hour records.

Despite being bested by Ganna in the final of the individual pursuit at the Wrold Championships in Berlin today, Lambie said he was convinced he could make up the deficit at altitude.

Although he was beated in the final, in the qualifying round in Berlin Lambie posted a time of 4:03.640 to reach the final, putting him 1.7 seconds off Ganna’s World Record time of 4:01.934.

The American was full of admiration for Ganna’s qualifying ride. “It's textbook,” he said. “He was just dead on the split that he wanted to ride the whole time. It's incredible. It's super impressive.”

But he still felt that simply by going to altitude he could overcome the gap between their two times. “A 4.03 at sea level bodes well for 8,500ft of altitude. That’s a good few seconds, for sure,” he said.

After the USA failed to qualify a men's team pursuit team for the Olympics in Tokyo this summer Lambie has been given him some freedom. “My form has gotten a lot better from not having to balance like team pursuit and individual pursuit a little bit and being able to go full focus on this. I can kind of do my own training. It helps a lot for sure,” he said.

When asked if he felt that he could even break the four minute barrier he said: “Oh, absolutely. I mean, honestly, I'm surprised he didn't do today. I mean, he has had a tough team pursuit the last couple of days. But I was fully expecting that to happen and I would have been over the moon to see that. It would have been awesome.”

Lambie is likely to ride against Huub-Wattbike team-mate John Archibald when the team makes the trip.

Filippo Ganna has beaten his own individual pursuit world record at the UCI Track World Championships in Berlin.

The Italian posted a time of 4-01.934 over the 4km distance in the qualification round, .713 seconds quicker than his previous best time of 4-02.647.

Data posted by Xavier Disley on Twitter claims the 23-year-old had less than 1km/h variation in his speed after 1km until the 4km finish line. The Ineos rider averaged 59.520km/h as he beat his previous record set in November.

Ganna now qualifies ahead of the USA's Ashton Lambie ahead of the gold medal event this evening as he attempts to defend his title.

Over the past two days in Germany Ganna has also ridden three round of team pursuit, eventually helping Italy take the bronze medal.

The individual pursuit is not the only world record that's been broken this week. Denmark broke the team pursuit world record three times as they won gold, the Scandinavian country also having won the team sprint earlier in the week while also setting a new world record time.

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Britain's Laura Kenny was involved in a dramatic crash during the omnium event but will continue to ride the rest of the races in the event.

Kenny suffered a cut to her face near her right eye that needed stitches after coming down hard in the scratch race in the Berlin velodrome.

After a concussion check by the British team doctor she has opted to continue with the rest of the races, despite being likely out of medal contention yet apparently being keen to test herself against a world-class field.

The 2020 UCI Track World Championships will conclude on Sunday March 1 with the men's madison and women's keirin finals.

The team pursuit bar was raised once again at the 2020 Track World Championships, as Denmark set a second world record in one day.

After qualifying with a new fastest time earlier in the day on Wednesday (February 26), the Danes came out swinging in the first round of the team pursuit with a new record of 3-46.203, almost two seconds faster than the record set in 2019.

Earlier in the day, the Denmark team pursuit unit of Lasse Norman Hansen, Julius Johansen, Frederik Rodenberg and Rasmus Pedersen covered the 4,000 metres in a staggering 3-46.579, smashing the previous world record set by the Australian squad in the World Championships in Poland last year, 3-48.012.

They still have the finals to come on Thursday, as they look the clear favourites to take gold.

It was a mixed day for the British squad, as the team sprint unit powered their way to a silver medal, behind the world record setting Dutch squad.

The first GB medal of the 2020 Worlds went to Ryan Owens, Jack Carlin and Jason Kenny, who set a British record outside of the Olympics and took silver behind a truly dominant Dutch squad.

After claiming the medal, Kenny said: “We maximised what we had, we were technically pretty good, fairly consistent so I’m really happy. It’s a nice step forward.

“We’ve had a good year and we’ve saved our best for the World Championships, which is good as it doesn’t always work out like that.

“It’s been a well-structured year, it’s gone well and it’s peaked here today.”

Kenny and his team-mates set a qualifying time of 42.471 then went faster in the finals with a time of 42.294.

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But they were up against a blistering Dutch team, who set a new world record of 41.225 and took gold.

But in the team pursuit, the British men looked to be off the pace of their rivals, as they will have to settle for fifth place and will miss out on a Worlds medal.

Laura Kenny put in a strong performance on the opening night of racing, taking fourth in the scratch race and looking unphased by her broken shoulder.It was Dutch rider Kirsten Wild who took the rainbow jersey in the scratch race.

Denmark kicked off the 2020 Track World Championships with a new men’s team pursuit world record in qualifying.

The men’s GB squad struggled to perform against their rivals in Berlin on Wednesday (February 26), qualifying for the finals in seventh place, three seconds slower than Denmark.

But the women’s team showed much more promise, comfortably qualifying for the next round in second place behind the USA.

The Danish four rider team of Lasse Norman Hansen, Julius Johansen, Frederik Rodenberg and Rasmus Pedersen covered the 4,000 metres in a blistering 3-46.579, smashing the previous world record set by the Australian squad in the World Championship in Poland last year, 3-48.012.

Brits Ed Clancy, Ethan Hayter, Charlie Tanfield and Ollie Wood made it through to the next round, but their time of 3-50.341 excludes them from the gold medal contest – the best they can now achieve is a bronze model.

The men will now face Germany on Wednesday evening for the first round, before the finals on Thursday evening.

Last year in the worlds, the men’s GB team took silver in the team pursuit behind the Australians, while Denmark took the bronze position.

There were more encouraging signs for the women’s GB team pursuit squad, who put in a time of 4-11.871 and finished .6 of a second behind first place USA.

GB will face off against Canada in their first round on Thursday before the finals are settled on Friday.

>>> Australian team unveil striking new track bikes to take on Team GB at Tokyo 2020 Olympics 

In 2019, Elinor Barker, Katie Archibald, Eleanor Dickinson and Laura Kenny also missed out to the Australians.

This year the team, with Neah Evans stepping in for Laura Kenny, will hope to beat their familiar rivals with the Olympics just a few months away.

Laura Kenny has opted to skip surgery on her broken shoulder so she can race the World Championships later this month.

Kenny suffered the injury in a high-speed crash during the World Cup last month, but was still selected by British Cycling to race the Track Worlds in Berlin.

The four-time Olympic gold medallist has told BBC Sport that she has skipped an operation on her shoulder after the surgeon told her the Olympics would be “pretty much off the cards.”

She said: “I told him ‘an operation’s not for me, thanks’.

“Did I want an operation to get it fixed, but with a two-week delay in me getting back on the bike, or did I want to just see how it goes? I decided to see how it goes and the next day I got back on the bike.”

Kenny, 27, fell in the tempo race while competing in the omnium during the Milton Track World Cup round in Canada in January, but the fall didn’t deter British Cycling from selecting her to race the Worlds alongside Katie Archibald, Elinor Barker, Eleanor Dickinson and Josie Knight.

The Worlds are a key event for the British track squad as all riders are pursuing a position in the Olympic team in Tokyo this summer.

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After her selection, Kenny said on Instagram: “Crashing out of a World Cup omnium when you’re leading the overall to the last time my shoulder blade was in one piece.

“Probably the hardest 2.5 weeks I have had in my career so far, sat on the aeroplane thinking that’s my Worlds over this year.”

She later added: “Me being me I decided an operation wasn’t for me because I wanted to give the Worlds selection a shot.

“Although it’s taken me out of two of three events, I would have liked to ride, I am so pleased to announce I have been selected for my ninth World Championships.”

Italy's Filippo Ganna has broken the world record for the individual pursuit twice in one day at UCI Track Cycling World Cup in Minsk, Belarus.

The Ineos rider is set a time of 4-04.252 in his qualifying round on Sunday morning (November 3) before beating that with a time of 4-02.647 in the final as he took gold.

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Britain's John Archibald finished second, while the USA's Ashton Lambie, the former record holer, finished third.

Ganna's time beats the previous record set by Lambie, who posted a time of 4-05.423 at the Pan-American Championships in Cochabamba, Bolivia in September this year. While Lambie's record was set an altitude of 2,500m, Ganna's is the first world record set at sea level since Australian Jack Bobridge posted 4-10.534 in Sydney in 2011, breaking Chris Boardman's 16-year-old record.

In the other racing in Minsk, Britain's Matt Walls edged out Elia Viviani in the men's omnium final, taking two laps on the rest of the field, with Italian Viviani moving over Portugal's Rui Oliveira to take silver. Walls finished with 163 points, Viviani trailing by nine points on 154 and Oliveira on 149.

This victory earned Britain its second gold medal of the World Cup after Mark Stewart took the men's points race final.

Meanwhile, the Netherlands' Kirsten Wild and Amy Pieters won the women's Madison, beating Britain's Laura Kenny and Emily Nelson as the Dutch took two gold medals on day two to move into the lead in the medal table.

The third and final day of racing in Minsk will include Madison and sprint finals for the men and the women will compete in the omnium and keirin.

Great Britain won four medals at the Track Cycling World Championships in Poland two weeks ago, meaning they hit the modest UK Sport medal target. But they are now chasing the Netherlands and Australia all the way to Tokyo.

Times in many of the events are getting faster as gear sizes get significantly bigger across sprint and endurance disciplines. Sprinters are now racing on massive 140-inch gears.

“They’ve increased hugely in a very short period of time. In every event they’re considerably higher,” Britain’s endurance coach Iain Dyer said. “The female sprinters are racing on gears that Chris Hoy wouldn’t have ridden a kierin on in London.”

The increases in speed and gear size of the team pursuit has moved the event more into the realms of sprint riders. Australia set a new world record in Pruszkow of 3-48.012 to beat Great Britain to the gold medal by almost three seconds and the difference in the size and shape of the two teams’ riders compared with previous years is clear to see.

Australian Leigh Howard got himself released from his Aqua Blue contract in 2017 to return to the track after six years on the road. “The difference between road and track is getting bigger and the ability to switch between the two is getting harder and harder. I’ve gained around 10 kilos from when I was on the road,” he said.

The British team is doing the same. Three-time Olympic champion Ed Clancy was perhaps the event’s first sprint-endurance hybrid rider, as Dyer calls them. “Team pursuiters generally are doing more work in the gym,” Dyer said.

“To exploit the gains means the start has become more demanding. You can eke a 10th of a second in your second, third and fourth kilometres, but those gains are pretty hard won. The lower-hanging fruit is at the start of the race.”

Australia’s 1-01 minute opening kilometre ridden on bigger gears pushes the demands of the event into the realms of sprinting, hence the change in rider type. This evolution all but rules out road riders returning to the event for the Olympic Games.

“Without being name-specific, I think the door is closing on athletes of that type,” Dyer said. “But not exclusively, let’s not forget Brad [Wiggins], Geraint [Thomas] and Pete [Kennaugh] have raced very fast times.

“But the sort of gears used now would probably snap in half a team pursuiter from eight years ago.”

Track star Laura Kenny says the British squad "have to come together as a team" ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

British riders may have fallen behind rival nations on the boards after they came away from the 2019 World Championships with just one gold medal.

Kenny, 26, suffered from an unexpected drop in form after showing great promise during training the previous week, possibly due to illness.

The four-time Olympic champion told Cycling Weekly: “I don’t think we can be complacent because then we’ll never get a result.

“I just think it’s a process and British Cycling are normally really good at that process.

“I think from here on in we have to come together as a team, and not just the women’s squad and men’s squads, not the individual teams, the whole team as a collective and we need to move forward and work together.”

>>> Omnium bronze for Hayter at track world championships

The British squad suffered a number of setbacks in Poland, as Katie Archibald was pulled from the women’s Madison event due to concussion and Kenny dropped out of the omnium due to her sudden loss of form.

In the women’s team pursuit, the British squad came second to the Australians while the men also came second in the discipline.

GB did win four medals, including one gold courtesy of Elinor Barker in the scratch race.

On her sudden drop in performance, Kenny said: “It’s one of those frustrating things that I’ll never find out what was wrong.

“They thought it was a virus, but I’ll never actually know. All I know is it wiped anything that I had.

“Last week in training, it was a different story. I could do way more than I could do in any of the rounds at the weekend. It was just a little bit disappointing for me to know I had really good form and I was really confident going into it, to then having nothing.”

Kenny said she threw up on the day of qualifying and had been suffering from lower back pain.

She added: “It wasn’t until the team pursuit when I thought ‘wow I can’t do this. It’s just gone.’ It was a bit frustrating, because I felt responsible for the team’s performance.”

The Worlds in Poland is not the first time Britain have underwhelmed in pre-Olympic competition.

In 2015, the team came away from the Worlds with no gold medals but went on to an outstanding performance at the Rio Olympics a year later.

The GB team now have 16 months before their main goal, the Tokyo Olympics.

Kenny is due to take part in her first Six Day event in Manchester later this month.

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She said: “I’m really looking forward to the atmosphere. When I was pregnant with Albie I was watching the London Six Day on telly and it was one of the only events where I wished I was there.

“We do World Cups and we do World Championships every year, but when the Six Day was on, because it was a new event, I kind of missed being there.

“I was almost jealous that everyone else was racing and I couldn’t. So I’m really looking forward to it.”

The inaugural Manchester Six Day takes place from March 22-24, with tickets currently on sale.

Ethan Hayter enhanced his position as GB's omnium rider for the 2020 Olympics with a good set of rides and a bronze medal today.

Hayter, the 2018 European omnium champion, is one of four riders vying for the ride. A worlds medal will do his chances no harm, but he came off the track knowing it could have been gold.

He performed consistently in the scratch, tempo and elimination races in Poland to put him in to the joint lead with Campbell Stewart (NZl) going in to the final points race. This however meant he had to watch everyone as the field was tightly grouped behind them.

But it was Stewart, who had marked Hayter closely during the first half of the race, who escaped and gained a lap. "I just didn't follow him and I should have. I had the legs to do it." Hayter said. "To be honest I let it get to my head a bit. Normally I'm quite clever, I follow a lot of the right moves, but early on I did way too much. I panicked when a lap went, I didn't realise that was I was still in the lead after that lap got taken. I'd already panicked and spent too much gas there."

"You've got to watch everyone, really. [Benjamin] Thomas (Fra) had a bad scratch race, he came 20^th so he was right down the rankings, took a lap and got himself a silver medal. Anything can happen."

Elinor Barker was a last minute replacement for Katie Archibald in the women's Madison, only learning after breakfast that she would be riding. "I don't want to use it as an excuse because obviously I have ridden a lot of Madisons before and I'm relatively experienced." Barker, a silver medalist in Hong Kong 2017, said.

"I think it's just mentally having your head in the game. Katie has been preparing for the Madison with Neah for the last month or so, since we decided selection."

"They've been training on the track, watching videos, formulating a plan. I haven't really been part of that. And I then got a crash course this morning over breakfast. We watched a year's worth of videos and I tried to kind of absorb it all."

The pair eventually finished fourth just missing out on a podium when the Danish duo escaped at the end to take double points and the bronze medal. Gold went to the Netherlands.

Evans was riding in her first world championships following a breakthrough year in 2018. "I had that moment a couple of weeks ago, one of those things flashed up on my Facebook that two years ago I was doing my first competition with British Cycling, the Cali world cup."

"The week before that I’d retired as a vet. That was one of those moments when you think, ‘ah, a lot has happened in two years.’ But it’s still a steep learning curve."

Both Jack Carlin and Joe Truman were knocked out of the men's sprint in the 1/8 finals. The result was particularly tough for Truman who beat Australian Nathan Hart only to be relegated for riding on the blue as they came out of the final turn.

"Joe’s done a lot of work toward today and this was the main event he came to ride so it’s extra disappointing for him." Sprint coach Justin Grace said.

"He’s going to have to live with that and we’ll take him away and work on training him to ride in a straight line down the straights. A quick look over your shoulder or under your elbow and you can be there."

With no medals in the men's sprint events this year there are however no alarm bells ringing in the British camp "It hasn’t been our best week." Said Grace. "The positives that we can take out of it is that we know where our riders are at, even if we didn’t prove it this week. We’re in the same boat as a lot of other nations.

Reigning world champion Katie Archibald will not ride the Madison at the UCI track cycling world championships on Saturday (March 2).

Archibald crashed in the omnium points race on the previous evening, and although she was able to continue she has since developed a concussion and has therefore been pulled from the event.

Elinor Barker who won the scratch race on the opening day, will take her place and ride with worlds debutant Neah Evans.

"After an initial assessment from our Doctor on the track, [Katie] was deemed fit to carry on racing," explained British Cycling Performance director Stephen Park.

"However, a reassessment this morning showed Katie has developed signs of concussion and therefore has been withdrawn from the Madison on Medical Advice."

"The welfare of our athletes is paramount, and we have a  concussion policy in place to follow when such incidents occur."

Archibald herself was brutal in her self-assesment following the omnium where she finished seventh despite the heavy fall that left her with a nasty cut and swelling on her left elbow. "What's worst is I don’t feel bad, I've just been so consistently ungraceful," she said afterwards, even going on to question her position on the squad.

"I still tapered for a world championships the same as everyone else, I've sat there with form and I've just chucked it down the toilet. We're usually bragging about our strength in depth, but at moments like this it means I'll be out."

Elinor Barker will now ride with Neah Evans. Barker won a Madison silver medal with Emily Nelson at the 2017 world championships, while Evans is making her debut at this level after a breakthrough year in 2018.

The Scot only started racing the Glasgow track league in 2014. Her rapid rise saw her win team pursuit gold at the European championships last year and take an omnium bronze at the recent world cup in Paris.

>>>>Why 2018 was Katie Archibald's year

Archibald had herself been a last minute replacement for double Olympic champion in the Omniun, Laura Kenny who admitted after the women's team pursuit to a unexplained loss of form.

Now Archibald will miss the event she has dominated since it was introduced to the women's program in 2017.

She has ridden six international level Madisons and won all of them. Always partnered with a rider with a faster sprint, Archibald's strength has seen her not only win, but dominate many of the Madisons she has ridden.

In an interview with Cycling Weekly magazine at the end of last year she said of the Madison; "It feels like this is what I've been waiting for. The truth is I'm a lot better at pursuiting, but when it comes to race day, I wish I was good at points and Madison racing."

John Archibald could only manage seventh place in qualifying for the individual pursuit at his track worlds debut in Poland today. The Scot faded to a 4-14.7 minute ride, five seconds slower than the British record he set at the national champs in Manchester in January.

His ride was hotly anticipated after his 4-09 minute IP on his way to winning the national title just five weeks ago. But in the end he wasn't able to recreate that ride on the Pruszkow velodrome that has now seen some of the fastest pursuiting times in history set on it's boards.

>>>Fastest individual pursuit times in history

"I’m still trying to put my finger on what went wrong, just from start to finish I could feel myself getting weaker the whole way through, there’s no particular reason why," he said.

He admitted that it was a big change coming in to the British set up and all the support that is on offer, but that didn't explain his ride. "I’ve been out of my comfort zone, whether that’s been a factor I don’t know. It’s unusual to crack like that. It wasn’t like I was a second off my best, I was a long way, so something drastically went wrong."

The track was once again running fast in qualifying as Italian Filippo Ganna set a new sea level record with a 4-09.456, just two tenths of a second off of Ashton Lambie's world record that was set at altitude at the Aguascalientes track in Mexico.

Germany's Domenic Weinstein also dipped under four minutes 10 seconds as riders continue to make big gains in the event.

Archibald will now have a short break before his road season starts, giving him time to plan his development on the track. Self coached and with only two years of racing under his belt he hasn't given up on further improvements or further selection for Great Britain. "There’s work I can do. I’ve not worked at it properly before. I only realised how much of a weakness it was when I did the World Cups over the winter and by that point you’re relying on training you’ve already done and you can’t really make progress."

"My start is a weakness, my top end speed is a weakness so lets work on those. I’m a bit on the diesel side of it at the moment and need to find some peak power."

Laura Kenny has pulled out of the women's omnium today, citing the loss of form that saw her struggle through the team pursuit rounds yesterday.

"I am absolutely gutted to announce that I won’t be riding in the omnium at the World Championships today," she announced on her Instagram feed this morning

"I haven’t been feeling right all week for reasons we’re not sure of, but we do know my performances in the team pursuit over the last two days have been well off where I have been in training over the last two weeks."

>>>> Australia dominate in team pursuits

The British women were beaten by Australia by just two tenths of a second last night and the disappointment was clear to see. The team rode a fast time, but had been going faster in training at Manchester the week before.

Kenny had to ride shorter turns on the front and said that she felt like she had let the team down.

"I would have given the omnium my best shot," Kenny, the two-time Olympic omnium champion went on to say.

"I really wanted to do it but with the depth of the squad it was decided that it was better that I didn’t compete and give someone else the opportunity." Katie Archibald will ride the omnium in her place.

Archibald, who is due to defend her Madison world title with Neah Evans on Saturday, will ride the four-round event that starts this afternoon with a scratch race.

Soon after her brother John makes his Worlds debut in the individual pursuit where he is a strong medal hope following a phenomenal winter when he twice broke the British national record and helped HUUB Wattbike win the team pursuit at the World Cup in London.

The Australian squad snatched the team pursuit mantle back from Britain’s grasp on Thursday night, winning both the men’s and women’s events and setting a world record in the process.

With just a year and a half to go to the next Olympics the ball is now firmly in their court. A year after setting a world record at the Commonwealth Games then men’s quartet went faster still with a 3-48 minute ride.

Veteran of the men’s team Leigh Howard put it down to Australia’s single-minded focus on the team pursuit, an approach brought in by Simon Jones, the British coach who took over at Cycling Australia as performance director back in 2017.

“We're a very committed team. We have one focus, we don't have any other focuses on the road or anything else,” said Howard.

“There's one very clear target, that's the Olympics and the team pursuit. That's one big reason we keep going faster.”

The Commonwealth Games performance came after the Australians famously missed the 2018 World Championships, most of the World Cups and all the long haul travel that went with it.

Jones admitted that gave them the chance to reset and refocus and it continues to pay dividends. In Pruszkow where they had only ‘favourable’ conditions they took another 1.7 seconds off their record with a huge final turn from Kel O’Brien who took the speed back up to over 66kph for the last 500m.

The run in wasn’t exactly smooth for the Australians either. Ten weeks ago Alex Porter crashed at the National Madison Championships: “I broke my collarbone, fractured six ribs, a vertebra and punctured a lung.” he explained.

“I was just hoping to make it here. So to get a 3-48 is pretty surreal. I was off the bike for probably 10 days and it took me two or three weeks to come back to full training. The coaching staff did a great job to get me here”

The women’s race was much closer with Australia winning by just two tenths of a second after their lead tumbled in the last two laps as the final three riders split under the pressure.

Close or not, there was no hiding the disappointment for the British riders who had ridden quicker in training last week.

“As a team we rode well.” Laura Kenny said afterwards. “I feel like I’ve let the girls down I feel like I haven’t had the best legs the last couple of days and I feel quite a bit of responsibility”

Both teams went slower this evening than they had in their round one rides earlier in the day, and as the Australian trio split, the Brits clawed back a deficit that had gone out to almost a second with 750 metres to go but it was little consolation.

It’s their first women’s TP gold since 2015 following three years of dominance by the American team. They could only manage seventh this year, clearly missing Chloe Dygart who was battling injuries through much of 2018.

In the men’s Keirin, Jack Carlin made it comfortably through to the final but after moving to the front when the derny swung off he was soon boxed in as others came over the top.

“The problem is you get out of the box and you’re 3-4 people back, its a long way to come back,” he said after finishing fifth.

After winning two silver medals at last year’s Worlds, Carlin now just has the men’s sprint to go but shows no signs of pressure to perform.

“I’ve got myself set in the GB team and there’s real promise within the whole team," he said. "Maybe we didn’t show it yesterday in the team sprint but this is probably the strongest we’ve been within GB. It’s just a matter of making it click.”

Matt Walls finished sixth in the men’s scratch but admitted to making a few mistakes through the race. Riding in his first World Championships he was found himself exposed on the front on a few occasions and couldn’t respond when the final sprint started. Gold went to Australia’s Sam Welsford started the event less than ten minutes after winning the team pursuit.

Matthijs Buchli of the Netherlands won the keirin, continuing the country’s resurgence in men’s sprinting.