Bayley, Bos battle highlights Sydney World Cup

By AFP

Bayley and Bos faced off at the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

Photo: Agence France Presse (file photo)

Australia’s Olympic champion Ryan Bayley and Dutch world champion Theo Bos will highlight the opening round of the four-leg UCI World Cup track cycling in the keirin and team sprint events in Sydney on Friday.

The pair’s sprint match-ups have been some of the closest fought in the track cycling with Bayley upstaging the then reigning world champion Bos at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Bos is the current world champion for the sprint and the keirin but missed a medal in the teams sprint at this year’s world championships in Bordeaux when the Australians defeated the Netherlands in the bronze medal ride.

Bos has been training with the Dutch team for the past three weeks on Bayley’s hometown track in Perth.

“I had a good camp in Perth and I’m looking forward to the first racing for the season,” Bos said Thursday.

“I think I will be good and as the world champion in the keirin I want people to see that I deserve to be wearing the jersey,” he said. “If Ryan is in form he will be the major threat and we also have the World Cup champion Josiah Ng from Malaysia and the Great Britain riders so it will be a pretty hot competition.”

Bayley said he was ready to take on all comers in Sydney.

“The camp has been going really well and it’s an added incentive to beat the internationals when we face them in Australia,” he said.

“Being the first major race meeting of the season means everyone will be unsure of the form of their rivals so there’ll be a fair bit of tactics coming into play.”

More than 250 cyclists from 32 countries will be contesting 16 events of the three days at Sydney World Cup leg.