The 2015 UCI Indoor Cycling World Championships in Johor Bahru, saw three defending World Champions conserve their titles, cheered on by an enthusiastic Malaysian crowd.
The host city of Johor Bahru organised the team presentation in one of the city’s commercial centres where cycle-ball and artistic cycling demonstrations enabled the local public to discover the two disciplines before competition got under way.
The three-day UCI World Championships drew to a close on Sunday evening with the Austrian cycle-ball team of Markus Bröll and Patrick Schnetzer winning the final against Switzerland’s Roman Schneider and Dominik Planzer. It was a repeat of last year’s World Championships when the gold and silver medals went to the same two teams. The play-off for bronze saw France claim its first cycle-ball world medal in 50 years: Seventh last year, the team of Quentin Seyfried and Benjamin Meyer beat Germany to claim the final podium position.
In artistic cycling, André and Benedikt Bugner (Germany) successfully defended their world title in the Pairs Open category, as did fellow German athlete Michael Niedermeier in the Single Men.
The Bugner brothers, world record holders, were clear favourites going into the competition and did not disappoint, dominating fellow Germans (Robert Schmidt and Stefanie Dietrich) and Switzerland (Fabienne Hammerschmidt and Lukas Burri). The Single Men podium was exactly the same as last year: gold and silver went to Germany with Niedermeier and Simon Puls, while Hong Kong’s Chin To Wong claimed bronze for the third consecutive year.
In the ACT 4 Women category, the German foursome of Christine Posch, Katharina Gülich, Michaela Schweiger and Ramona Ressel ousted defending UCI World Champions Switzerland (Celine Burlet, Flavia Zuber and Jennifer and Melanie Schmid) who had to settle for silver in front of Slovakia, which claimed a well-deserved bronze medal.
A new UCI World Champion was crowned in the Single Women’s competition, with Austria’s Adriana Mathis taking gold in front of Slovakia’s Nicole Frybortova, celebrating her best result at world level. Third place went to Germany’s Lisa Hattemer.
Germany once again dominated the Pairs Women category with Julia and Nadja Thürmer claiming gold in front of fellow Germans Lena and Lisa Bringsken and Switzerland’s Fabienne Gamper and Rahel Nägele.