William Tidball brought Team GB a first gold medal in the track events of the 2023 UCI Cycling World Championships at Glasgow’s Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome to cap off an opening night also marked by a world record in the women’s team sprint and the impressive return of Chloé Dygert.
Men’s scratch: Tidball launches Great Britain’s campaign
“It’s a dream. I’ve been watching it on TV since I’m a kid and now I’m a UCI World Champion.” William Tidball was full of emotion moments after taking Great Britain’s first track rainbow jersey of the 2023 UCI Cycling World Championships being organised in Glasgow and across Scotland.
Participating in his first UCI Worlds, the 23-year-old from Exmouth rose to the occasion and powered past all of his rivals in the final lap of the men’s scratch, as the peloton came back to Alex Vogel. The Swiss man had launched a daring attack inside the last kilometre but he couldn’t resist Tidball’s furious return.
Japan’s Kazushige Kuboki repeated his silver medal from the 2022 UCI Track World Championships. Belgium’s Tuur Dens rounded out the podium.
Women’s team sprint: Germany’s world record dashes British hopes
Team GB’s sprinters (Lauren Bell, Sophie Capewell and Emma Finucane) made it crystal clear: it would take an outstanding performance to prevent them from grabbing home glory in the 2023 UCI Cycling World Championships.
And Germany’s fast women produced that outstanding performance: Lea Sophie Friedrich, Pauline Sophie Grabosch and Emma Hinze set a new world record to retain their rainbow jersey with a minimal margin: 45.949 vs 45.923 (+0.075).
Both teams went faster than the Germans when they set the world record (45.967) to take gold last year in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (France).
In the final for bronze, China (Shanju Bao, Yufang Guo and Liying Yuan) got the best of the Netherlands (Shanne Braspennincx, Kyra Lambernik and Hetty van der Wouw) to add another medal to their tally after gold in the Olympic Games and silver in last year’s UCI World Championships.
Women’s individual pursuit: Dygert back on top of the world
At 26 years old, Chloé Dygert (USA) has already lived an amazing career with extreme ups and downs that led to an emotionally charged victory on Thursday in the individual pursuit. It’s her eighth Elite rainbow jersey on the track (she also dominated the individual time trial at the UCI Road World Championships in 2019), the fourth in the individual pursuit… but the American star takes her first UCI World title since a career-changing crash in the 2020 UCI Road World Championships.
Dygert overcame the pain and the injuries to smash the opposition in Glasgow, including the final where she overtook the defending UCI World Champion Franziska Brausse (GER). She even came close to the world record she set three years ago in Berlin – 3:17.542 vs 3:16.917 in 2020, the last time she took gold before today’s title.
New Zealand’s Bryony Botha took the third spot on the podium ahead of Great Britain’s Neah Evans. At home, the Scottish reigning UCI World Champion in the points race will find other opportunities to grab medals.
Setting the tone
Before these performances, the morning session had been the occasion for different nations to show their collective strength with the qualifications of the men’s team pursuit (round one on Friday and finals on Saturday) and team sprint (round one and finals on Friday).
The battle between the Dutch and the Australians is on: the Dutchmen dominated the qualification of the team sprint, almost breaking the 42sec barrier (42.046 for Roy van den Berg, Harrie Lavreysen and Jeffrey Hoogland) while the Australians recorded the second best time (42.531) ahead of Poland, Japan, France, Great Britain, Germany and China, the other nations qualified for the next round.
UCI World Champions in 2020, the Danes impressed in the qualification of the team pursuit. With a time of 3:46.816, Niklas Larsen, Carl-Frederik Bevort, Lasse Leth and Frederik Madsen put more than 2secs between themselves and their rivals, led by New Zealand ahead of Italy, Australia, France, Canada, Germany and Japan.
In addition to the men’s team sprint, two more titles are up for grabs on Friday in the Sir Chris Hoy velodrome: women’s 500m time trial and the women’s scratch.