Pendleton prevails over Krupeckaite in women's sprint final

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Victoria Pendleton regained her status as sprint world champion, claiming a hard fought victory over Australia's Anna Meares in a drama-filled semi-final. She then went on to cruise through the final round against Lithuanian Simona Krupeckaite, who was relegated on the first round and lost to Pendleton in the second.

But it was the semi-final that proved to be the most heated, as the two arch-rivals went head to head with everything in their arsenals. In the first race, Pendleton ran into Meares as she tried to pass in the final bend and crashed, giving the Aussie race one.

On the second race, sporting track burns on her shoulder, Pendleton was beaten to the line by Meares, but a decision by the judges to relegate the Australian for failing to hold her line brought the race to a tie.

On the final race, Meares took the lead too soon and a charged-up Pendleton came past just at the line.

She then went on to defeat her opponent in the finals to win her sixth career world title.

“When I raced Anna Mears in the semi, I thought I’d be riding for the bronze medal,” Pendleton said.

“She’s such a fantastic opponent, there’s been a lot of chat in the media… and she was so strong last year and in London I honestly thought she had the upper hand so to make it through that far I thought it was a really amazing achievement.”

Meares was clearly disappointed to miss out on the gold medal final in her home country, but gave her strategy for coping with the defeat.

“Deal with it, learn from it and implement the new strategies I need to be better,” Meares said. “It’s an Olympic year, the qualifications are close, the races are hard fought, we’ve seen crashes and relegations,” she said.

“People are really starting to fight very hard because that how important it is.”

Quarterfinal report

Anna Meares (Australia) will battle arch-rival Victoria Pendleton (Great Britain) in the semi finals of the women's sprint on Friday after both cruised through their quarter final heats.

Meares faced off against China's Shuang Guo, another whom the Australian has had several fierce battles with – most memorably in 2008 at the Beijing Olympics where Meares prevailed to reach the final against Pendleton – with the first in the best of three match-ups giving the new world record-holder most cause for concern.

Guo hit Meares with an elbow, unbalancing the Australian slightly before she recovered to take the opening clash. In the second heat, Meares took the initiative on the back straight, winding up to come around Guo in a very focused performance.

Pendleton meanwhile, also won her two heats against Frenchwoman Virginie Cueff with relative ease.

Simona Krupeckaite (Lithuania) was comprehensive in her defeat of an in-form Miriam Welte (Germany) while Lyubov Shulika (Ukraine) is the other rider through.

Qualifying report:

Australia's Anna Meares set a new world record to qualify fastest in the women's sprint, in a time of 10.782 over the flying 200.

The Queenslander is the reigning world title holder and was the sole rider of the 29 starters to dip under the 11 second mark.

Meares bettered the old mark, held by Simona Krupeckaite by .011 – the Lithuanian could only manage the seventh fastest time. Shuang Guo of China was second fastest (11.004) with night one's gold medallist from the team sprint, Miriam Welte ranked third (11.033).

"I was nowhere near expecting that," said Meares, shocked at her own performance. thinking she would instead hit the 10.8 or 10.9 mark.

"I was surprised during the effort because I remember when I sat down I was thinking to myself 'this doesn't feel good. Go! Go! Go!, Go harder!"

The medals in the women's sprint will be decided on Friday evening after the quarter finals on Thursday evening with Meares admitting there was a lot of competition to get through in order to defend her world title.

"It's down to tactics, it's down to nerves, it's down to decision-making and speed doesn't win it for you," she said. "I've got to get it right across the board if I want to come home with that world title."

Final Results

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