Martyn Irvine made history for Ireland by winning its first men’s medals at the world track cycling championships in 116 years on Thursday.
Irvine won the silver in the individual pursuit, and within an hour was the champion of the scratch race.
He is the first Irishman to medal at the track worlds since Harry Reynolds in 1897.
Photo: Reuters
Irvine finished second to defending champion Michael Hepburn of Australia in the pursuit, then produced a spirited attack over the last 10 laps to claim gold in the scratch race.
Irvine powered from Andreas Mueller of Austria to finish first.
“It’s unbelievable, I do not know what to say. I’m a world champion,” Irvine said. “It was not easy, but once I went it was all or nothing. I didn’t look back, it was full gas.”
Hepburn won his second gold, a day after helping Australia take the team pursuit.
“It has been just a really very successful championships for me,” Hepburn said. “I was pretty confident today.”
Irvin finished second to take silver, while Stefan Kueng of Switzerland took bronze over Alexander Morgan of Australia.
In a rematch of the Olympics last year and world finals in the women’s team pursuit, the British team of Olympic champions Laura Trott and Dani King and new partner Elinor Barker beat Australia for gold for the third straight time.
“It was really hard. It [the race] seemed to flow nicely,” Trott said. “We have changed a few things from the qualification and we did it.”
The British team finished more than a second ahead of Australia. Canada took its second straight championships bronze in the discipline against Poland.
In the first race on the second day of the championships in Minsk Arena, Wai Sze Lee of Hong Kong claimed her first world title in the women’s 500m time trial.
She was the Olympic bronze medalist in keirin.
“I knew I could win today,” Lee said. “I hope I will do even better next year because I know that many better riders have not come here.”
Miriam Welte of Germany was 0.023 seconds behind to take silver — her second medal in two days. She won the women’s team sprint with Kristina Vogel.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier