Day 5 track worlds: Best US Keirin result in more than a decade
Final day of competition sees many Olympic champions add rainbows to their trophy case.
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The boards were busy Sunday in the final day of racing to close out the 2021 track cycling world championships.
Madalyn Godby was fourth in the women’s Keirin, just missing the podium in what was the best Keirin result by a U.S. track cyclist since 2008.
Dutch rider Harrie Lavreysen dashed to gold in the marquee men’s sprint event at the track cycling world championships in a packed Stab Vélodrome in Roubaix on Sunday, beating his compatriot Jeffrey Hoogland in the final.
Lavreysen, 24, won the same event in both Poland 2019 and Berlin 2020 making him a triple world title winner in this key event of the championships. He also beat Hoogland at Tokyo for the Olympic medal and at the recent European championships.
On the final day of competition, Lotte Kopecky of Belgium won the women’s points race.
It was quite a feat as she pushed, British ace Katie Archibald into second and nine-time world champion Kirsten Wild of the Netherlands on Sunday.
The event was Wild’s last race as she retires from professional racing aged 39 having also won the Madison here.
International Cycling Union boss David Lappartient was present to give her a send-off speech.
In the final race of the championship, Italian veteran Elia Viviani, who came to Roubaix with world silver and bronze medals as well as an Olympic gold medal, finally added a rainbow jersey to his collection.
Viviani outsprinted Portuguese rider Iuri Leitao when they were the last two remaining riders.
Danish duo Lasse Norman Hansen and Michael Mørkøv won the men’s Madison to add to their Tokyo title in an epic 50km, 200-lap race with 20 sprints.
Lea Sophie Friedrich won the other final on the closing day, taking the women’s Keirin.
Best U.S. Keirin result in more than a decade
The last day of racing saw four Americans take to the boards at the Stab Vélodrome. Godby and Mandy Marquardt raced the women’s Keirin, with Godby finishing fourth, the best U.S. placing in the event since Jennie Reed won the women’s Keirin in 2008.
In the semi-finals, Godby rode smart, marking the wheel of Lea Sophie Friedrich, the winner of the women’s sprint event, to earn her way into the medals final. Godby started in the final position in the major final and was forced to come the long way around if she wanted to take control of the race.
In the end, Friedrich proved why she already had two rainbow jerseys this week, with Godby fourth, just off the podium.
Jennifer Valente, who won two bronze medals earlier in the week in the scratch race and elimination race, was seventh in the points race in her final race of the season.
Gavin Hoover capped a solid worlds with eighth in the elimination race.
Many of the top track stars will compete next in a five-round pro series dubbed the UCI Track Champions League in a TV-friendly format starting November 6 in Mallorca, Spain.
— AFP contributed to this report
