Ireland’s women’s Madison pairing of Lydia Gurley and Lydia Boylan finished 10th at the 2017 UCI Track Cycling World Championships today.
In the women’s 3km individual pursuit, Anna Turvey was 17th with a time of 3.40.484.
In the Madison, making its debut at the Championships, two-person teams share the effort over the 30km race, with one rider always racing and another recovering at the top of the track. The hand over involves a hand sling with the racing rider propelling the recovering one forward.
There were spectacular crashes as the Belgian team of Jolien D'Hoore and Lotte Kopecky swept to a hard-fought win.
The first team to hit the decks was the Irish one, with the duo coming down with the hand sling. Later in the race Gurley suffered another crash leaving Boylan with extra laps to race before her teammate returned.
Britain took silver and Australia bronze.
Speaking after the race, Boylan was unhappy with their performance: "I’m disappointed we could not show our best today; we are much better than that in training, our technique in Palma was so much better than today, and I feel like we let our coach David (Muntaner) down."
Turvey was also disappointed, saying. The UK based rider won bronze in the individual pursuit at the Europeans and has been producing times in training that would have had her fighting for medals.
She said: "That was not what I was hoping for – I had been riding 3.32s in training, so I need to have a look at what it is that is impeding me. I know it’s there, I just need to figure out how to get it out on race day, and see why I didn’t deliver the performance I am capable of."
Gurley is in action again tomorrow, competing in the points race on the final day of competition.
Also racing is Shannon McCurley in the Keirin and Mark Downey and Felix English in the madison. Downey and English won gold and silver in this event in the last two World Cups, so will be aiming for a good performance.
Benjamin Thomas of France stormed to gold ahead of New Zealand's Aaron Gate after a thrilling final sprint in the men's omnium.
Thomas held off a furious challenge from his rivals on the last lap to finish with a total of 149 points, two more than Gate.
Albert Torres of Spain, who led coming into the last of the four events that make up the omnium, had to settle for bronze.
In the men's sprint event, Russia's Denis Dmitriev showed nerves of steel to beat Dutchman Harrie Lavreysen in the final and claim his first world championship gold, with New Zealand's Ethan Mitchell securing the bronze.
A dominant display by American Chloe Dygert gave her gold in the women's individual pursuit, the 20-year-old comfortably beating Australian Ashlee Ankudinoff by over six seconds. Dygert's U.S. team mate Kelly Catlin beat Rebecca Wiasak to take bronze.
Earlier in the day, Russia claimed two medals in the women's 500m time trial event. Daria Shmeleva won gold and Anastasia Voynova bronze with Germany's 2012 Olympic team sprint champion Miriam Welte taking silver.
