More medals for Britain at Track World Championships but Italy steal the show

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.