A little over three years ago, Anna Morris was working as a junior doctor, pursuing track cycling outside of her shifts. Now, she’s a three-time world champion, her most recent rainbow jersey coming after a shock victory over world record holder Chloé Dygert in the individual pursuit on Saturday night.
To say Morris was the underdog going into the final at the UCI World Championships would have been a just statement. The 29-year-old, who entered the Great Britain squad just two years ago, sat trackside earlier in the afternoon, and watched as Dygert, a four-time title holder in the event, smashed her own world record – taking it from 3:16.937, down more than a second to 3:15.663.
The American then led for more than two thirds of the final, until suddenly, the tables turned. The scoreboards at either end of Denmark’s Ballerup Super Arena flashed green beside Morris’s name with three laps to go. Spurred on by her coach and teammates, the Brit hung on, and won by three tenths of a second.
“When I could hear them screaming, I thought, ‘Maybe you’ve just got to dig really deep here, and then hold on to what you’ve got and see where you end up,’” she told Cycling Weekly. “I heard the guns go. They went at slightly different times, but they were so close together, I wasn’t sure whose had gone first.
"I had to take a little while to register what the scoreboard said, and I’m just in shock really. Chloé’s a phenomenal rider, especially in individual pursuit.”
Morris remembers watching on the television when Dygert set her previous best time four years ago. At that point, the Brit wasn’t long out of medical school – the place she discovered track cycling – and was halfway through a two-year stint as a doctor.
Having already won the team pursuit on Thursday, Morris's plan was simply to do the best she could. “If I could walk away with a personal best, I would have been ecstatic,” she said, “but to be world champion, I’m speechless.
“I was thinking yesterday, ‘I really wonder what it would feel like to walk away with two rainbow jerseys.’ Emma Finucane did it with the team sprint and the sprint. I wondered what it would feel like, not ever thinking that it would happen. It’s more than a dream, to be honest.”
One of those willing Morris across the line was Olympic gold medallist Sophie Capewell, who claimed her first individual Worlds medal earlier in the evening.
The 26-year-old won silver in the 500m time trial, breaking her own British record twice over the course of the day. The grimace on her face afterwards was testament to her effort in the final. As Capewell rolled around the track, she hissed air through gritted teeth. She then collapsed over her turbo trainer, and slowly spun the lactic acid out of her legs.
“I’m one of those athletes, I’ve got massive legs, so I produce a lot of lactic really quickly,” she smiled. “I’m doing it for the big strong girls. Carrying more muscle means you quickly switch on to lactic build up, and it’s really hard to get rid of it.”
Capewell’s silver came after disappointment the previous day, when she missed out on the podium in the individual sprint. “I had a choice today to be sad or to turn it into anger,” she said. “I tried to turn it into anger and get it all out on the bike, and I think it paid off.
“This year’s been big, but the last, I would say, five years for me have been massive. It’s been a big build-up, and a struggle at times, to get through not just grief issues [Capewell’s father, Nigel, died in 2021], but doubting myself, having misunderstandings – not in a bad way – with coaches, but trying to figure out the best way to work for me. It’s taken a long time to come around, but I’m glad to finish [my season] on a high.”
Iana Burlakova, competing as a neutral athlete, won the gold medal in the event, while Katy Marchant – Capewell’s gold-medal-winning teammate in the team sprint on Wednesday – finished third.
There further medals for GB on day four as Katie Archibald and Neah Evans snatched third in the Madison. The Scottish pair collected points early in the 120-lap event, but fell on the back foot when four other nations gained laps. It took a late surge from Archibald, winning the final sprint, to bunnyhop onto the podium.
“You know that line about how bronze medallists are happier than silver medallists?” Archibald said afterwards. “When you’re losing, there’s a redefinition of what’s a win. When it came down to those three [final] sprints, I was doing the maths thinking, ‘There’s a new plan here. We can still take something.’
“You have to make that decision of whether you’re going gold or whether you’re going bronze. If we had made it a little earlier, maybe it could have been different.”
The decisive moment came when Danish duo Amalie Dideriksen and Julie Leth attacked for a lap in the final third of the race. The home favourites remained out front for around 20 laps, cleaning up maximum points over two sprints, before gaining a lap on the field.
The move catapulted them to the top of the leaderboard, a scene that triggered a roar from the stands. The crowds later serenaded their new Madison champions with an a capella version of the Danish national anthem.
For Evans, who suffered with Epstein-Barr Virus earlier this year, there were positives to take away from the race. “We’re both hugely competitive, and we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t want more,” she said. “We came here to win, but I think when you look at the build-up and all the circumstances behind it, you go, ‘Actually, we strung together a really good race.’”
That turbulent build-up also included a race back to fitness for Archibald, who broke her leg in multiple places back in June.
“This is my 10th World Championships and I’ve had quite an array of build-ups,” said Archibald. “I think until about this morning – I was very nervous this morning – I had no pressure. The power that that gives you, when you’re just kind of bopping around without carrying that knot in your chest for the weeks leading in, that’s something that I want to take forward; know that it will hurt your legs, but it doesn’t have to hurt your head.”
The evening finished with the final race of the men’s Omnium, which saw Belgium’s Lindsay de Vylder earn a first world title. GB’s Ethan Hayter, who won the event in 2021 and 2022, placed fifth.
“The Omnium’s a hard day, it’s all day, and when you’re not really 100%, you start to suffer a bit,” Hayter said. “I’ve not ridden the track since Paris [Olympics], so I think that’s quite a big reason.”
