After Mathieu van der Poel crossed the finish line of Glasgow’s crit-esque Worlds course - once the interviews were underway and the report live on the site - I took my daughter out to ‘ride’ her ‘bike’ around our housing estate. I’m employing air quotes in abundance here because she’s 12-months-old, and the bicycle-shaped-object in question is actually two beach balls connected by a strip of aluminium housing a saddle that she insists on sitting several centimetres behind. But I’m a new parent, so of course, I was as proud, smug and alert to potential crashes in equal measures.
The World Championships, like the Olympics, have that golden ‘inspiring a new generation’ feel, which somehow is more pronounced when that next generation is - I'd say all of a sudden, but no, after nine months of arduous growing - your responsibility. And it’s hard not to feel inspired by the week that’s been - the Dutchman overcoming a skin-stripping crash and winning with only one working shoe and the women’s Team Pursuit squad ending a nine-year Worlds dry spell, Elinor Barker later pairing up with Neah Evans to dominate a crash-marred Madison.
