Cycling Australia has included nine world title holders among a powerful team for this month’s track world championship in the Netherlands.
The “Cyclones” topped the medals table at the Copenhagen world event last year and Cycling Australia promised more to come in Apeldoorn from March 23 to 27.
“We’re coming off the back of a strong World Cup campaign where we fielded both development and elite squads,” the organization’s national performance director Kevin Tabotta said yesterday.
The men’s endurance line-up ranks among the strongest Australia has ever fielded, spearheaded by Cameron Meyer, who won three gold medals last year and three more at the Commonwealth Games.
Jack Bobridge last month clocked a world record time of 4 minutes, 10.534 seconds for the 4,000m in individual pursuit -qualifying at the national titles.
The individual pursuit, while no longer an Olympic Games event, remains one of the most prestigious events at the world championships.
Anna Meares, bidding for a first world championship sprint gold, travels to the Netherlands fresh from her victory in the final round of the World Cup in Manchester.
She stunned 2008 Olympic champion and British favorite, Victoria Pendleton in the semi-finals before beating China’s Shuang Guo in the gold medal round.
“Anna heads to Apeldoorn in the best position she’s ever been in to deliver a sprint medal,” Tabotta said. “But it’s not just Pendleton and Guo she needs to worry about, she’ll need to beat whoever she lines up against all the way through.”
In Manchester, England, Meares also joined forces with Kaarle McCulloch for the first time this season to win gold in the team sprint.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later