Great Britain equalled their best ever UCI Track World Championships haul on Sunday, the final medal coloured bronze courtesy of Katy Marchant in the keirin.
The squad collected 13 medals throughout the week – four golds, four silvers and five bronzes – matching the previous best from 2012, when GB won six golds ahead of the London Olympics.
The Netherlands topped the medal table at this week's competition inside Denmark’s Ballerup Super Arena. The Dutch collected fewer medals overall than GB, also winning four golds, but one more silver.
Marchant’s keirin bronze was her nation’s only medal on the final day. She earned her podium place with a last-lap dash to the line, overtaking teammate Emma Finucane down the home straight.
“I try to go into keirins with not too much of a plan. I think, sometimes for me, if you go in with a plan, it tends to not unfold the way you want it to. I think I have a really good instinct on racing and I raced really well all day,” Marchant told Cycling Weekly.
“Tactically, I don’t think I absolutely nailed that final, which I hate to say, and I feel a little bit disappointed by,” she continued. “I know I’m really strong in the last lap, and a late surge is my kind of thing, so with a lap and a half to go, I just thought to myself, ‘Just give it everything’. At the bell, I was going as hard as I could. I always fight to the line.”
For Marchant, who has been part of the GB squad for over a decade, this week's championships were the most successful of her career. Her other accolades include gold in the team sprint with her Olympic champion teammates on Wednesday, and a bronze in the 500m time trial.
“It’s been really, really tough, but we’ve used each other to get through this. The result that we got in the team sprint gave us really good momentum,” she said.
“I became European champion early in the year, I became Olympic champion, and then I became world champion. I’ve been in this sport for a long time now, and I’ve never been able to say that. Winning breeds winning, I think, and I just feel in a really, really good place.”
The women’s keirin was won by Mina Sato of Japan, who followed her compatriot Kento Yamasaki’s success in the men’s event. After a 37-year keirin drought, the discipline’s birthplace has now crowned two world champions in a week.
“If it’s not us that’s winning, I enjoy seeing them win,” said Marchant, who went to keirin school in Japan in 2016. “You know how much that means to their country as a whole. Yes, track cycling is big in the UK, but it’s nothing like what keirin racing is in Japan.”
In the women’s points race, Denmark’s retiring Julie Leth claimed her second world title in two days, defeating the event’s reigning champion, Lotte Kopecky (Belgium), by just three points.
Leth led the standings going into the final sprint, and only had to place higher than Belgian to win. Unfortunately for Kopecky, an untimely chain drop left her unable to contest the last dash, and Leth charged ahead to the roar of the Danish faithful.
Afterwards, the home crowds rose to their feet in applause, syncing up their claps to the beat of Tina Turner’s ‘The Best’ played over the speakers.
There was déjà vu an hour later when the velodrome DJ chose the same song to celebrate Tobias Hansen’s victory in the men's elimination race. The Dane went into the finale with former two-time champion Elia Viviani, who was too tired to kick in the last sprint, instead peeling away and conceding the victory.
The race was neutralised four times from start to finish, due to collisions, a crash, and a lengthy elimination decision. For seventh place GB rider Noah Hobbs, the stoppages “unsettled” the event.
“It kind of messed with me a little bit when it kept stopping and starting,” he said. “It was just a bit unsettled the whole race, so I was having to do little spurts of energy when I didn’t want to.”
The 20-year-old made his elite debut at the World Championships, and finished sixth in the scratch race held on Thursday. “It’s been good,” Hobbs said of the experience. “It’s one of the only times you get to go to a major event and not have any pressure.
“Obviously I wanted to come away with a decent result. I feel like I’m pretty happy with what I’ve done, especially in the scratch.”
The Netherlands owed a lot of their success at this year’s championships to sprinter Harrie Lavreysen, who added three new world titles to his palmarès, bringing his collection to a record 16.
The 27-year-old won the men’s individual sprint for the sixth year in a row, this time beating his teammate Jeffrey Hoogland 2-0 convincingly in the final. Afterwards, Hoogland held his compatriot’s hand and raised it into the air, an act of respect that acknowledged Lavreysen’s position as the best track sprinter in the world.
Elsewhere on Sunday, German pairing Roger Kluge and Tim Torn Teutenberg won the men’s Madison, thanks in part to two laps gained on the field. After a slow start to the 200-lap race, GB’s Ethan Hayter and Mark Stewart made a second-half grab for points, and finished fifth.
“I’ve been kind of struggling with pace, to be honest,” said Hayter, who also finished fifth in Saturday’s Omnium. “I wasn’t great today, Mark was good. Fifth was a good result, really, considering my form.”
Great Britain medallists
Gold
Katy Marchant, Sophie Capewell, Emma Finucane (team sprint)
Emma Finucane (sprint)
Katie Archibald, Josie Knight, Meg Barker, Anna Morris, Jess Roberts (team pursuit)
Anna Morris (individual pursuit)
Silver
Ethan Hayter, Josh Charlton, Charlie Tanfield, Ollie Wood, Rhys Britton (team pursuit)
Josh Charlton (individual pursuit)
Jess Roberts (Omnium)
Sophie Capewell (500m TT)
Bronze
Joe Truman (1km TT)
Dan Bigham (individual pursuit)
Katy Marchant (500m TT)
Katie Archibald and Neah Evans (Madison)
Katy Marchant (keirin)
