No sooner has the 2022 Tissot UCI World Track Championships finished than the world’s greatest para-cyclists challenge for their rainbow jerseys.
The 2022 UCI Para-cycling Track World Championships take place from Thursday 20 to Sunday 23 October. The omnium flying start for the different C classes will kick off proceedings on the Thursday morning and the competitions will culminate with the Women’s and Men’s B sprint finals on Sunday evening. The fast Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines track is 250m long and 8m wide with a maximum 43.8° on the bend and 13° on the straight. It is made from Siberian wood.
Here, we pick out a snapshot of the para-cycling stars to look out for this week.
Dame Sarah Storey: back from injury
There’s little that can be written about Great Britain’s Dame Sarah Storey that hasn’t already been penned. The 44-year-old has won an incredible 28 Paralympic medals across swimming and cycling including 17 golds, both of which are British records. Away from the track, she’s Greater Manchester’s Active Travel Commissioner, charged with helping people out of their cars and onto their bikes. She’s won multiple UCI World titles, though was ruled out of the 2022 UCI Para-cycling Road World Championships in Canada after a crash during a UCI Para-cycling Road World Cup left her with concussion symptoms, broken ribs and a partially collapsed lung. She’s returning from that injury in France and will be seeking to defend her Women’s C5 individual pursuit world title.
Jozef Metelka: three titles to defend
In 2009, Slovenia’s Jozef Metelka lost his left leg after a traffic accident while studying at Oxford Brookes University in England. His dreams of becoming a tennis coach disappeared… but ignited new dreams to become a world-class para-cyclist while continuing to enjoy his other passions of skiing and climbing. In the intervening 13 years, the 36-year-old has won three Paralympic gold medals – C4 individual pursuit golds at both Rio and Tokyo and C4 time-trial gold in Rio – plus 12 UCI World titles. At the last UCI Para-cycling Track World Championships in Canada two years ago, he won golds in the C4 individual pursuit, Scratch race and omnium.
Samantha Bosco: coming off successful road season
Thirty-five-year-old Samantha Bosco heads up an 11-strong American team heading to France. The two-time Paralympic medallist is enjoying one of the strongest seasons of her long and illustrious career. She won both time trial and road race gold medals at the 2022 UCI Para-cycling Road World Championships in Canada, as well as the WC4 overall UCI World Cup title on the road. So, she’s in fine form, albeit there’s a degree of unpredictability of how Bosco will perform on the boards of France as this is her first international track competition since the 2020 UCI Para-cycling Track World Championships.
Emily Petricola: one of five reigning UCI World Champions from Italy
At the last UCI Para-cycling Track World Championships in 2020, Australia won eight gold medals and they’ll bring their five reigning UCI World Champions – Emily Petricola, Amanda Reid, David Nicholas, Paige Greco and Alistair Donohoe – to France. Forty-two-year-old Petricola will head up the 12-strong squad after she won an incredible three C4 titles in Milton: individual pursuit, omnium and Scratch race. The rower-turned-cyclist took silver in the C4 time trial at the 2022 UCI Para-cycling Road World Championships and will be aiming for further success this weekend.
Tristan Bangma and Patrick Bos: pursuit world record-holders
The Dutch duo of Tristan Bangma and Patrick Bos are one of the strongest tandem duos of recent times. In 2021, they won the gold medal in the Men B 1km time trial at the 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo along with silver in the men’s road race. At the 2016 Paralympics in Rio, Bangma also won gold in the men’s 1km time-trial B with his sighted pilot Teun Mulder. Bangma has three UCI World titles to this name, plus five silver medals and six bronze. Bangma and Bos also hold the pursuit world record of 3:59.470, courtesy of an average speed of over 60km/hr. They’ll be looking for more accolades in France, off the back of a unique build-up that saw the dynamic Dutch duo compete in gravel in the USA.