Katie Archibald and Great Britain celebrated an emotional women’s team pursuit win in Glasgow at the UCI Cycling World Championships on Saturday night.
Archibald joined up with Elinor Barker, Josie Knight, and Anna Morris to beat New Zealand to gold in a time of four minutes 8.771 seconds, more than four seconds up on their rivals, to give Britain a first world title in this event since 2014.
It was a fifth world title for Archibald, and a hugely poignant one as she races at these championships in her native Scotland to honour her late partner Rab Wardell, who tragically died of a cardiac arrest as he lay in bed last August.
New Zealand were ahead on the time splits for much of the opening 1,500 metres, but a big turn from Knight nudged Britain in front before the midway point.
Archibald then put on the power to open up a two-second advantage before pulling off with a kilometre still to go, the result all but beyond doubt.
Archibald and Barker were both part of the team when Britain last won the women’s team pursuit world title nine years ago, going on to enjoy Olympic glory in Rio before taking silver in Tokyo.
This is Barker’s first global track event since she became a mother after the last Olympics.
Britain had topped the time sheets in all three rounds of this event, having subbed in Elinor’s sister Meg Barker in place of Archibald for Saturday morning’s first round.
Archibald is saving herself for the elimination race and omnium in the coming days, a change to the original plan with Elinor Barker now joining Neah Evans in Monday’s Madison.
In the men’s team pursuit, Denmark beat Italy to take the world title in a time of three minutes 45.161 seconds, two years to the day since Italy beat Denmark to gold at the Tokyo Olympics.
There were more gold medals for Britain’s para-cyclists. Sam Ruddock successfully defended his men’s C1 kilo title before Blaine Hunt took the C5 crown, with Jaco van Gass then beating team-mate Fin Graham to win the men’s C3 scratch race and his second rainbow jersey in as many days.
Although Ruddock went in as defending champion, the 33-year-old called his title a surprise given his recent focus on the individual pursuit, in which he finished fourth on Thursday.
“Madness,” Ruddock said. “I didn’t expect it at all. We’ve done a lot of work around pursuits in the previous year so the target was to get a bronze medal ride off and we achieved that.
“The kilo was the secondary event so to go faster in the kilo and defend the title was a massive surprise.”
