Welsford Riding for Gold and Rainbows in Poland
Sam Welsford will ride for a third career world championship title in the men’s team pursuit on Thursday evening after Australia set up a ride-off for gold against archrivals Great Britain.
The two nations have held a virtual duopoly of the event over the past two decades with all Olympic and World Championship gold medals – with the single exception of Denmark in 2009 (World Champs in Poland) – dating back to 2002, having been won by either Australian or Great British squads.
That theme will continue in 2019 with the race-off for gold likely to threaten the existing world record mark of 3:49.804min.
The Australians set that time in winning gold at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games where they defeated England for the title. Australia opted not to send a team at last year’s World Championships, where Great Britain clocked 3:55.714min to defeat Italy for gold and possession of the rainbow jersey.
GB’s reigning world championship quartet of Ed Clancy, Kian Emadi, Ethan Hayter and Charlie Tanfield will once again go head to head for gold, but this time against the top ranked Australians.
Austraila set the fastest qualifying time in the morning session with Welsford riding with Kelland O’Brien, Leigh Howard and debutant Cameron Scott. The team recorded a time of 3:52.152min to set up a first round showdown with New Zealand.
Australia subbed in Alex Porter for Scott ahead of their trans-Tasman clash and proved far too strong for the Kiwis (4:05.861min) as they once again set the fastest time (3:51.529) in qualifying for their medal round ride with GB.
GB had earlier accounted for the dangerous Danes in their first round match-up with the world champions flexing their muscle to win impressively in 3:51.635.
The two teams appear evenly matched and there is a very real prospect that a sub 3:50″ time will be needed for victory.
Welsford will have a busy campaign in Poland, with the Rio Olympic silver medallist also in line to ride the Omnium and Scratch Race. Cameron Meyer is targeting the Maddison in 2019 where he is expected to partner Howard.
Sprint debutant Matt Richardson gave an excellent performance in his first taste at the top level of track cycling where he and the Australian men’s team sprint squad finished in seventh place.
Richardson rode first wheel out of the gates and was followed by Nathan Hart and Pat Constable. The Aussies qualified for the first round with a slick time of 43.628sec but were not at the same level as France in the head to head, finishing near half a second behind the eventual silver medallists.
France was defeated by new World Champion the Netherlands in the gold medal ride-off, whilst Russia out-gunned Germany for bronze.