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World Madison champions Roger Kluge and Theo Reinhardt have taken control after the opening night of the Six Day Berlin.

The track spectacular opened on Thursday night (January 24) in the German capital, with the home favourites starting strong.

Reinhardt outlasted his rivals to an early derny race success before the pair later scooped a team elimination victory, putting them on 90 points at the end of the first night.

Danish pairing Marc Hester and Jesper Mørkøv are chasing behind on 83 points, with another German team, Henning Bomel and Kersten Thiele, in third on 71.

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Reinhardt said: “We are not the fastest at the moment so we have to attack and we went a little bit early [in the final Madison sprint], but I think we saw in ourselves that we are strong.

“For us, it was a good evening, we are in the lead and it’s pretty good for us.

“The other guys are chasing, but for us it’s the same.

“At the moment it’s good that we lead but we’ll see tomorrow how it goes on.

In the women’s contest, the Danes proved themselves strongest on the first night as Trine Schmidt leads overall after taking an omnium victory.

Double European champion in 2017 Schmidt took glory in both the scratch and elimination races as she topped the table with 127 omnium points.

Team-mate and fellow Dane Julie Leth is 16 points adrift in the omnium, with French rider Pascale Jeuland is third on 100 points.

And among the sprinters, Max Levy starts the competition as favourite having won seven consecutive Six Day Berlin titles.

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Levy was quickest in the 250m flying time trial and he powered past Russian Denis Dmitriev in the head-to-head sprints.

Dmitriev’s compatriot Nikita Shurshin took the victory in the opening keirin.

Levy leads the sprinters classification with 50 points, Shurshin is second on 42 while Dmitriev is just one point behind in third.

Tickets are on sale now at https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/sixdaymanchester 

The Six Day Series is heading to Manchester between 22-24 March 2019. See some of the world’s best riders including Olympic and World Champions.