World Track Champs 2008

World track cycling champs 2008 held at Manchester March 26/30.

Day three report and pictures from Manchester March 28 - Results and Championship daily schedule

In Mallorca, 2007, the British team took seven gold medals over the five days of the World Championships. Going in to Day 3 this year they already had four in the bag and had an outside shot at equalling that record with two days still to go.

The women looked good for a medal of one sort or another in the newly introduced Team Pursuit, the team of three was built around Rebecca Romero and Wendy Houvenhaghel, who had already taken 1st and 4th in the individual event. Chris Hoy was through to the semi-final of the Sprint, but his opponent Roberto Chiappa was on form and, in the other semi was between Frenchman Kévin Sireau – who was looking sensational - and his Team Sprint team mate Mickaël Bourgain – both part of the ensemble that had already deprived Hoy of Gold. An outside hope in the Points race was Mark Cavendish who had won a Points race at European Under 23 level, but whose real strength is the Madison.

Women's Team Pursuit
Whoever went first in qualifying for the Team Pursuit was guaranteed a World Record – at least temporarily – as the event hadn’t been held before. The Great Britain team of Rebecca Romero, Wendy Houvenaghel and Jo Rowsell set of first and took the ‘record’, setting a time that would see them in the final against a very strong Ukraine team of Svitlana Galyuk, Lesya Kalitovska and Lyubov Shulika.

Women Team Pursuit - Pic Guy Swarbrick

Women Team Pursuit Podium - Pic Guy Swarbrick

The Bronze medal final was between Germany and Belarus and the Germans looked strong. Ahead throughout they were over a second up at the halfway point and two and a half seconds in front by the gun.

The British girls didn’t have such an easy time. The Ukrainians had looked strong in qualifying and were three tenths up after a kilometre. Romero, Houvenaghel and 19 year old Rowsell dug deep and started to pull them back. By the 2km mark they were nearly a second ahead and the lead kept on growing. With two laps to go the Ukraine team started to lose its shape, but the damage had been done much earlier and when the gun went the margin was over seven seconds. If the World Record set in qualifying had felt a little artificial, this one didn’t.

Romero looked, if anything, even more delighted than she had done yesterday and the trio hardly stopped smiling throughout the medal ceremony.

GOLD Great Britain 3:22.415 WR
SILVER Ukraine
BRONZE Germany

Women's Sprint
The first event of the day, though, was the Women’s Sprint. Here, too, Great Britain had hopes of a Gold medal with Victoria Pendelton, but with the final taking place today (Saturday), that was still to come as the riders set off for their 200m qualifying time trials. First up was the youngest member of the GB team, 17 year old Jess Varnish, making her World Championship debut. She put in a good performance with an 11.756 second time and, for now at least, was ranked number 1 in the competition.

Hijgenaar & Pendelton Sprint Quarter Finals - Pic Guy Swarbrick

Pendelton Sprint Qualifying - Pic Guy Swarbrick

Next up, though, was Sandie Clair of France who took two tenths off Varnish’s time and she dropped to 2nd. Heartbreakingly, she would stay in the top 24 riders until the very last competitor took to the boards, ultimately sharing 25th place with Valentina Alessio of Italy, who set an identical time.

All the favourites qualified comfortably, Jinjie Gong and Shuang Guo of China, Simona Krupeckaite of Lithuania, 50mm time trial Gold medallist Lisandra Guerra Rodriguez of Cuba, Willy Kanis and Yvonne Hijgenaar of the Netherlands, Natallia Tsylinskaya of Belarus and Jennie Reed of the US – as well, of course, as Pendleton, who topped the list with a stunning 10.904 second ride – all made the top 10. Pendelton’s young team mate Anna Blyth finished in the bottom half of the draw in 13th place.

In the first round of – sudden death – heats, things again went to form. Of the top ten riders only Svetlana Grankowskaja of Russia and Gong of China failed to make the next round with Blyth losing out to France’s Clara Sanchez.

As with the Men’s competition, the second round of heats – or 1/8 final – is again sudden death with two of the losing riders given the opportunity to move forward through a repechage. Tsylinskaya crashed out of her heat with Kanis and was unable to restart. Clara Sanchez decided to attempt an early attack in her heat against Pendelton, but the British rider swept majestically past her to book her place in the quarter finals alongside Kanis, Guo, Krupeckaite, Guerra Rodriguez and Reed.

In the match sprints Pendelton looked convincing, booking her place in the final with two comfortable wins against Hijgenaar. Reed, too, only needed two of the best of three series to despatch Guerra Rodriguez. The other two quarter finals were, in reality, just as lop-sided but a relegation to second for movement off the sprinter’s line in the first heat meant that Krupeckaite needed two more wins to eliminate Kanis and with one win in the bag Guo was ajudged to have committed the same offence in her match with Sanchez and needed another win to go through.

The semi-finals and finals take place today (Saturday).

Chris Hoy - Pic Guy Swarbrick

Sireau & Hoy Sprint Final - Pic Guy Swarbrick

Men's Sprint
Italy’s Roberto Chiappa is hugely popular with the British crowd – an ‘old school’ sprinter and a showman you sensed that, while few people wanted him to beat Hoy in the semi-finals, if someone had to they would rather it was him. Neither are great tacticians; both are hugely powerful – and Chiappa knew that he only had one real option – to go early, go hard and try to stay ahead. It was great to watch but you new that Hoy would have the speed to take the win, and so it proved.

Next time round Chiappa was more cautious, waiting longer before opening up, but the result was the same. The second semi was more a more tactical affair but in the end it was the same weapon – raw speed – that saw Sireau though to meet Hoy with two straight victories – clocking closing 200m times of just over 10.4 seconds - half a second faster than Hoy’s semi-final times.

The Bronze medal matches were an entertaining mix of Bourgain’s guile against Chiappa’ power and it was guile that triumphed, Chiappa saluting the knowledgable Manchester crowd that had supported him throughout the competition.

The atmosphere leading up to the final was incredibly tense, as were the opening laps of the first match, Sireau – although he must have been full of confidence at his own speed, also aware of Hoy’s ability. Two cautious starts, two blistering finishes – the first close, the second Hoy’s by some distance – and the Gold Medal was Hoy’s.

Amazingly, despite all the success of the last few years, this was Britain’s first Sprint title for 54 years – and Hoy becomes the first person ever to win track cycling’s Grand Slam of sprint titles – the Kilometre Time Trial, the Sprint, the Team Sprint and the Keirin. The partisan crowd have created a fantastic atmosphere for every event in which GB have competed – and have raised the roof of the National Cycling Centre for every home medal. But this was something else. Having had ‘his’ event – the kilometre time trial – removed from the Olympics to make way for BMX racing, Hoy had turned his attention to the Keirin and the Sprint just over a year ago. To have now won World Championships in both disciplines is an incredible achievement.

GOLD Chris Hoy GBR
SILVER Kévin Sireau FRA
BRONZE Mickaël Bourgain FRA

Kiryienka BLR controls the Points Race - Pic Guy Swarbrick

Men Points race
By the time the Points Race started, the GB women had won the Team Pursuit and Chris Hoy had qualified for the Sprint final. People were wondering if team GB could make it a clean sweep and take all three Gold medals on offer on Day 3.

Vasili Kiryienka of Belarus hadn’t read the script. Indeed, at one point you had to wonder if he had read the programme. As the riders lined up on the fence at the top and bottom of the track, Kiryienka was sat, deep in thought, on the access ramp on the other side of the track.

Prompted by an official he finally made his way across to join the field and that, in truth, was the last time he put a foot wrong. Second in the first sprint and first in the second, he made sure he was there or thereabouts every time points were on offer, scoring in 9 of the 16 sprints.

If the Points race had an equivalent of the Tour’s combativity award (for pointless, but determined and resilient effort) it would surely have gone to Russia’s Mikhail Ignatiev who – despite being off the front ahead of almost every sprint, picked up just 5 points with a third early on and a second towards the end of the race to finish 10th overall.

Britain’s Mark Cavendish struggled, too – but spend most of the race in the back half of the peloton. He contested a few sprints in the final third of the race and picked up a second place which put him in 14th place, but he was never in contention.

Christophe Riblon made a valiant effort to lap the field towards the end of the race and picked up maximum points in the last two sprints – and a Silver medal – for his efforts. But Kiryienka’s single point for 3rd place in the penultimate sprint was enough to squeeze out Peter Schep of the Netherlands and secure a well deserved Gold medal.

GOLD Vasili Kiryienka BLR
SILVER Christophe Riblon FRA
BRONZE Germany