Great Britain Cycling Team’s Katie Archibald won gold in the points race on the opening day of the Tissot UCI Track Cycling World Cup in Milton, Canada.
The omnium world champion showed her endurance strength with a dominant display in the first medal event of the weekend before teammate Mark Stewart won silver in the men’s points race.
The medals capped off an excellent start to the round for the Great Britain Cycling Team - with both the men’s and women’s team sprint squads qualifying comfortably for the first round of competition.
Magnificent in Milton
Archibald is a rider in terrific form - and she started the points race in Milton determined to show her class.
The British star won all four of the opening sprints to take an early lead, before finishing second in the fifth sprint, moving 14 points ahead of her nearest rival.
Archibald then took a lap on her own to gain a further 20 points, closely followed by Canada’s Jasmine Duehring, Jarmila Machacova of the Czech Republic and Coralie Demay of France who worked together to gain a lap on the field themselves.
But Archibald wasn’t done there. She picked up a single point on the sixth sprint, before claiming three more on the penultimate effort.
That left her rivals needing to take a lap to win the gold, as even a double points final lap win wouldn’t be enough to take the victory.
Her opponents were unable to get away in the closing stages, meaning Archibald crossed the line without gaining a sprint point - her only non-scoring sprint in the entire race - but having comfortably secured the gold on 47 points.
Duehring took a popular silver in front of a home crowd with 38, while bronze went to Machacova with 24 points.
Super Stewart
Mark Stewart claimed his first world cup medal in over a year with a brilliant ride in the points race.
The young Scot, whose omnium chances at the previous round in Manchester were cruelly hit by a crash in the opening scratch race, rode an excellent tactical race to get on the podium.
After a single point in the opening sprint, Stewart did not score for several sprints, before winning the fifth and claiming three points on the following sprint to move into medal contention.
Denmark’s Niklas Larsen broke away on his own to claim an extra 20 points in a fast and frenetic points race, but Stewart kept chipping away, winning two points in the eighth sprint before crossing the line first in the ninth to move into second place overall.
Stewart took three more points in the penultimate sprint to virtually guarantee himself a medal and despite his nearest rival Kenny De Ketele claiming four points in the final sprint, the Belgian had to settle for bronze on 19 points behind the British rider on 15 - with Larsen securing an impressive gold with 40 points to continue his excellent world cup season.
Team sprint
Both the men’s and women’s team sprint squads comfortably progressed to round one after opening day qualifying.
Sophie Capewell and Katy Marchant produced a best-ever qualifying result as a duo, finishing fourth to book their passage to the next round in a time of 33.889.
It was also a strong performance from the male trio of Jack Carlin, Phil Hindes and Joe Truman, who qualified as the third fastest team, stopping the clock in 44.174.
