It was a super Saturday in Santiago as madison veteran Katie Archibald teamed up with newbie Maddie Leech to deliver and impressively dominant performance and take the rainbow bands.
Archibald used her experience, and Leech her road-nous to safely navigate a number of nasty crashes in the early stages of the race – and pick up a decent haul of points in the first three sprints. The race moved at a ferocious pace, with attacks being made consistently. While strung out across the track, the bunch was very much still as one, the Netherlands pipping GB to the sprint points, dropping Leech and Archibald three points behind.
By the halfway mark, Archibald was moving at pace and got into position to dominate the sprint and take five points, closing the gap to the Dutch to just two points. However, this was immediately followed by a heavy crash for the Dutch riders, forcing them out of the race.
Their departure opened up the field for others and quickly GB, France, Italy, New Zealand and Japan had left the bunch, with Archibald quickly bypassing the quartet while Australia chased her down. As was a regular occurrence, the group eventually re-joined the bunch, as Leech picked up another three points to move back into the lead with two sprints to go.
With a quick hand sling, Archibald accelerated putting pressure on the rest and stringing out the main players. Italy responded and fought it out to take the sprint win, pushing closer into contention.
With the lead still theirs, and the laps in single figures, a missed change could have been the end but Archibald held on, marking the French from making big moves. Two laps to go and Archibald dropped Leech in the perfect position to jump ahead with Belgium and France, pushing ahead to get a gap before being caught by the French on the line.
Second in the final sprint was enough for the new duo to take victory, with their 30 points enough to keep the chasing teams at bay.
Stat: Katie Archibald becomes only the fourth woman to become Madison World Champion on two occasions.
Saturday’s gold wouldn’t be the Glasgow rider’s only medal of the week.
An excellent performance came in Friday’s dramatic elimination race. A number of suspensions were required due to crashes, but Archibald was able to avoid all of them – and retain her position in the bunch. The early stages were fraught with such a large peloton, but the 20-time European Champion was able to navigate them sensibly, without expending too much energy.
With the group whittled down to just four; Archibald would be joined by Ireland’s Lara Gillespie (IRL), Hesters of Belgium and French rider Berteau. Archibald made a last-minute sprint to knock out Berteau.
Once the podium was confirmed, Belgium bowed leaving a match sprint for the win. Archibald pushed down hard to pressure Gillespie, who responded in kind before pushing for the line. With Gillespie creating a gap, Archibald just didn’t have the legs to contest, and she took a superb silver medal.
The sprinters would have success in Chile too.
Iona Moir would have a fantastic World Championship debut to take silver with Emma Finucane and Rhianna Parris-Smith in the women’s team sprint.
The trio got off to a seamless start, qualifying fastest in a time of 45.808 seconds, 0.139 seconds ahead of closest rivals the Netherlands.
They flew through round one, beating Colombia with ease to take on the Dutch trio of Kimberley Kalee, Hetty van de Wouw and Steffie van der Peet for the title. With both teams going slightly slower than in the first round, it was all to play for. Parris-Smith shot out of the gate, showing her strength and power to bring her teammates up to speed, just 0.049 behind the Dutch. Moir pushed hard and rushed the gap with finesse before Finucane gave it everything to take them to the line. After a fantastic run of races, the title wasn’t to be and the British trio took home a well-earned silver medal, just 0.667 seconds off gold.
Lauren Bell would also be in action in the keirin, the Forres rider taking ninth place in the competition, but was only inches from making it into the elite final – after a fourth place finish in her semi-final race.
Dundee’s Mark Stewart paired up for the first time with Josh Tarling in the men’s Madison and gave us a fantastic performance which earned them the silver medal of the Sunday.
The duo kicked off conservatively, picking up points sporadically and monitoring moves from the other teams, keeping across the action and potential threats.
With about 50 laps down and GB in fifth place, Stewart moved to the front, using his track experience to manoeuvre through the field before Tarling dropped in ahead of the sprint to take the winning five points.
Tarling continued to grind away and push up, easing up until New Zealand, Spain and Italy reached him. With Stewart swapped in, the quartet committed before Belgium entered the fray, taking GB with them. GB were leading into the sprint, before and overtake from New Zealand, however the points were enough to push them into second place.
Continuing to push on, the group of five, including GB, picked up a lap with 139 to go. The British duo made a move for another lap but with the race strung out across the track, ended up in no man’s land.
Belgium continued to deliver a dominant performance and they moved up to the outright lead with Stewart and Tarling sitting comfortably in second. However, at sprint nine GB made a push for the sprint win ahead of Belgium, swapping places in the standings.
Not hanging around, the two nations continued to push off the group, picking up another 20 points for a lap gain, before Belgium shook off Stewart and Tarling and continued to drive through the group. Great Britain continued to work hard, trying to pick up points where possible and essentially block Denmark and Germany from taking their silver podium spot as Belgium were just too strong for everyone else.
After a fraught and tactical race, in which Stewart and Tarling worked incredibly well in their first outing together, the duo took home a superb medal to top off a fantastic championships for whole British squad.