UCI Track Worlds Day 3: Wild wins women's Omnium

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Kirsten Wild won her second rainbow jersey of the 2018 UCI Track World Championships on Friday, putting in a dominant performance in the four-race women's Omnium to take the gold ahead of Amalie Diderickson (Denmark) and Rushlee Buchanan (New Zealand).

"I'm super, super happy," Wild said. "The crowd gave me so much energy. I want to say 'thank you' to everybody. I've trained so hard for this, but so many people have helped me. It's really amazing that it's all worked out today."

The Women's Omnium started with a win for Wild in the Scratch Race, repeating her World Championship performance in the stand-alone Scratch Race on Wednesday. Italy's Elisa Balsamo was second, followed by France's Laurie Berthon.

Great Britan's Elinor Barker took top honours in the Tempo Race, winning sprints on laps eight, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, taking victory by three points over Gudrun Stock (Germany) and four points over China's Xiaofei Wang.

The penultimate event, the Elimination Race, saw Wild take top points again, beating Jennifer Valente (United States) into second and Balsamo into third. Diderickson was fourth, followed by Belgium's Lotte Kopecky in fifth.

In the final Points Race, Wild kept an eye on her nearest rivals as riders further down the standings swallowed up the points. Dideriksen took a late lap to move into the silver medal position, while Buchanan took two. Both riders moved within striking distance of Wild, but the Dutchwoman remained calm and put an exclamation point on her victory in the final sprint.

"I think that's the way to win an Omnium," Wild said. "I think that if you're at the back you don't win, so that's the only tactic that works"

Men's Points Race

Cameron Meyer defended his title in the Points Race to take his ninth world title. The Australian easily outdistanced runner-up Jan Willem van Schip, 70 points to 52. Great Britain's Mark Stewart was third at 49 points. Meyer built his lead with sprint wins on laps six, seven, eight, 11 and 14.

Meyer also lapped the field twice, along with Stewart, Kenny de Ketele (Bel), King Lok Cheun (China) and Andreas Graf (Austria). Van Schip lapped the field only once, but he won three lap sprints and took double points in the finale.

"Points race world title number five, it was a hard one but I am very happy," said Meyer. "It is special, everyone of them is special, especially when you win a gold medal in the world championships."

Men's Individual Pursuit

European champion Filippo Ganna (Italy) improved upon his silver medal from last year's championships in Hong Kong, where he lost out on the rainbow stripes to Australia's Jordan Kerby.

This year Ganna beat Portugal's Rui Oliveira, who set the fastest time in qualifying, by nearly two seconds with a time of 0:04:13.607. Oliveira stopped the clock at 0:04:15.428.

"I wanted to finish as soon as possible because I was suffering so much," Ganna said. "He started so strongly, but I relied on my coach and on the plan that we had.

"When did I realise I passed him? When I did it. In those moments you don't have much time to make important reasoning," Ganna said. "You are going all out from start to finish and the only thing you can do is just keep yourself on the track.

In the race for bronze, Russia's Alexander Evtushenko beat Great Britain's Charlie Tanfield 0:04:13.786 to 0:04:15.930.

Women's Sprint

Kristina Vogel successfully defended her rainbow jersey in the Sprint competition, handling Australia's Stephanie Morton in the first gold medal race, falling to Morton in the second but then bouncing back in the third to take the gold.

In the race for Bronze, Germany's Pauline Sophie Grabosch defeated Hong Kong's Wai Sze Lee in two successive races for the final podium spot.

Men's Sprint

Racing in the morning session, the men sprinted through the qualifier and two rounds to whittle the field down to eight riders who will contest the quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals on Saturdy to decide the winner.

Jeffrey Hoogland (Netherlands) set the fastest qualifying time, covering the opening test in 0:00:09.674. Australia's Matthew Glaetzer set the next best time at 0:00:09.677, followed by France's Sebastien Vigier at 0:00:09.701.

Following the 1/16 and 1/8 rounds, eight riders emerged for the quarter-finals, where Ryan Owen (Great Britain) will face Maximilian Levy (Germany), Glaetzer will face Denis Dimtriev (Russia), Sebastien Vigier (France) will face Mateusz Rudyk (Poland) and Jack Carlins (Great Britain) will take on Edward Dawkins (New Zealand).

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