Omnium provides double golden celebration for GB at Track Cycling Worlds

Cycling Track 25 Oct 21

Olympic medallists Katie Archibald and Ethan Hayter proved Great Britain’s dominance in the omnium as they both took home gold during a medal-laden week at the Track Cycling World Championships.

GB ended the competition in Roubaix with eight podium finishes – those two omnium successes, Archibald’s silver in the women’s points race and five bronze medals.

Two-time Olympic gold medallist Archibald repeated her trick from the recent European Championships by winning all four events in the women’s omnium to surge to the title ahead of Belgium’s Lotte Kopecky and Italy’s Elisa Balsamo.

It was one of four podium finishes across the week for the Scot, as she also took points race silver and contributed to women’s team pursuit and Madison bronzes, and after her omnium dominance, she admitted she had felt the pressure.

“I had a nice run in Euros,” she said. “The races here have gone quite differently, and in some ways I’m happy I’ve succeeded in different ways.

“I was just so unbelievably nervous and it feels so much better now.

“We had a really solid Olympic Games prep. Me and Laura [Kenny] working really closely on our Madison assault, and with that she was doing omnium prep.

“I was doing a lot of that with her just so that we were comrades, as it were, so I’ve really benefitted essentially from her Olympic prep to run into this. I just had to tune myself up the last four weeks.”

Archibald teamed up with Neah Evans to take Madison bronze, as Dutch duo Amy Pieters and Kirsten Wild claimed gold, with the British pair joining Megan Barker and Josie Knight for a third-place finish in the team pursuit.

On the men’s side, Hayter was the British star as the Olympic silver medallist produced a composed performance to become world champion in the omnium, while also contributing to the men’s team pursuit bronze medal alongside Ethan Vernon, Charlie Tanfield and Oliver Wood.

“The way that last race of the omnium went, it was quite tight at the start but I knew if I scored well in the first few sprints and had a little gap it would make life a lot easier for me,” explained Hayter.

“The race was going really hard and people were tired but I just kept the pressure on and once I was off I committed and took the lap and then ended up taking another, so yeah, it’s amazing.”

The other two GB bronze medals came from Rhys Britton in the men’s scratch race and Sophie Capewell, Blaine Ridge-Davis and Milly Tanner in the women’s team sprint.

Photo credit: SWPix

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