Mark Stewart and the Madison pairing of Katie Archibald and Elinor Barker claimed silver medals on the final day of the Tissot UCI Track Cycling World Cup at the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome in the Emirates Arena, Glasgow.
Stewart’s silver came in the omnium, the final event of a weekend over which Great Britain also topped the medal table and won the overall title.
After their team pursuit triumph on Friday evening, Archibald and Barker joined forces for the Madison, and quickly established themselves in the upper reaches of the leaderboard.
When the British duo were well-placed going into a sprint, more often than not they took maximum points, however they failed to contest every one, allowing the consistent Australian duo of Annette Edmondson and Georgia Baker to build a lead.
Despite Archibald and Barker’s best efforts, Australia kept themselves just out of reach at the top, and left the British pairing locked in a battle for silver with Dutch world champions Kirsten Wild and Amy Pieters.
It was a battle that they won in fine style, delighting the home crowd with some aggressive riding in the final laps, eventually winning the last sprint to take their overall total to 31 – nine points behind the Australians and 12 ahead of the Dutch.
Barker said after the race:
“It was a little bit mixed. We’re not massively happy with how we rode – we could have been a lot better. We were good and we were fast in the sprints, but we didn’t actually compete in enough of them. However, it’s quite nice that even when we’re not performing as well as we can, we can still medal.”
In the omnium, Dundee’s Stewart was solid throughout, finishing sixth in the opening scratch race, before taking maximum points in the tempo race. Another sixth place followed in the elimination event, meaning that the Scot went into the final points race second overall, six points behind Italy’s Francesco Lamon.
Consistency was again key for Stewart, as he steadily accumulated points to keep his tally ticking over. France’s Benjamin Thomas climbed to the top of the leaderboard, but Stewart overhauled Lamon – who held on to bronze despite not scoring a single point in the final race – to claim silver.
Great Britain could have added further medals on the final day, with Jason Kenny and Ollie Wood finishing fourth in their respective events.
In the men’s keirin, Olympic champion Kenny had to progress the difficult way after finishing third in his heat, however he led from the front to win his repechage and advance to the semi-finals. He replicated that impressive form to win his semi-final, going to the front and holding off the field to cross the line first.
It was a tactic he elected to employ again in the final, going to the head of the race with two-and-a-half laps left. This time, he couldn’t quite hold on, and narrowly missed out on a medal as he was beaten to the line by Sebastien Vigier, Maximilian Levy and Denis Dmitriev.
Wood lost out on a scratch race medal as he was edged out of the sprint for bronze by Germany’s Maximillian Beyer.
Eventual gold and silver medallists Felix English (Ireland) and Sebastian Mora Vedri (Spain) gained a lap on the field, leaving Wood and a small group of riders to fight for the bronze medal. The fourth-placed finish was Wood’s second of the weekend, while he also won Madison silver alongside Ethan Hayter yesterday.
Following her gold medal in yesterday’s keirin, Katy Marchant broke her flying 200m personal best on the way to the quarter-finals of the women’s sprint competition. She recorded the third fastest time of the morning – 10.754 – to earn herself a bye into the 1/8 finals.
There, she met America’s Madalyn Godby, who had beaten young Briton Sophie Capewell a round earlier. Marchant edged her out on the line to set up a quarter-final meeting with Olena Starikova, which the Ukrainian took 2-0.
The medals won today take Great Britain’s tally to six over the weekend, after golds in the women’s team pursuit and keirin, and silvers in the men’s team sprint and Madison during the opening two days of competition.
