In the El Clásico of individual pursuit finals – world champion vs world record holder – it was the latter, Josie Knight, who won the title at the British Track Championships on Friday night.
Just one second separated the newly crowned European champion and rainbow-jersey-wearer Anna Morris inside the Manchester Velodrome. Morris led for all but the last 250m of the 4km event, at one point by more than two and a half seconds, before Knight clawed it back on the home straight to win with a 4:24.029.
A gasp filled the track centre when the gun sounded and the scoreboard tipped in Knight’s favour. For the second night in a row, the IP world champion had been beaten at this year’s championships, after Charlie Tanfield bettered Josh Charlton on Thursday. Knight was perhaps the last person in the room to realise she’d done it, too.
“I was coming into the straight and I hadn’t heard her gun yet, so I drove all the way to the line, and I really couldn’t tell [who had won],” she told Cycling Weekly. “It took me a half a lap to be like, ‘Oh wait, that’s my name with number one next to it!’”
Knight’s title-winning ride came two weeks after she set a new world record of 4:19.461 at the UEC European Track Championships in Konya, Turkey. She topped the qualifying board at Nationals on Friday morning, nipping Morris by one tenth of a second, to set up an all-star final.
“I could hear the commentators, and for the first six laps – when the pain hasn’t quite got to you yet – I was so aware that they were saying Anna was like 1.5 seconds up,” she said. “With six [laps] to go, I was like, ‘There’s nothing to lose, just empty it all to the line.’ I felt sort of in control of the hurt.
“I’m just over the moon,” the 28-year-old continued. “You can’t really ask for much more than beating the world champion… It’s such a privilege to have such a good race and to race Anna. I hope the crowd realised that that’s as good an IP final as you’ll get anywhere in the world.”
Curiously, Knight competed with the same helmet and wheels that Tanfield rode to victory on Thursday, having gone to his house to borrow them earlier in the morning. She also wore an old European champion’s skinsuit belonging track sprinter Emma Finucane, for lack of time to make her own. “The only thing that was mine was my legs and my shoes,” she smiled.
Richardson’s reign continues
(Image credit: Olly Hassell/SWPix)
Following the individual pursuit final, Matthew Richardson rounded off a peerless display in the sprint competition with a 2-0 victory over 2023 national champion Harry Ledingham-Horn.
Richardson, who beat the 20-time world champion Harrie Lavreysen twice at the European Championships earlier this month, won every heat he contested across Thursday and Friday, at times sitting up with half a lap still to race. He is now a third of the way to defending the clean sweep he managed last year, with the team sprint and keirin still to come.
“I don’t come here to get second. I don’t go anywhere to get second,” Richardson said afterwards.
One person in the media zone likened the sprinter’s dominance to Eusebio’s second-half showing against North Korea at the 1966 World Cup, when he scored four goals, and made his opponents look like schoolboys.
Richardson’s tactic, he said, was to “race well, but race smart – I’ve got a pretty big race block this year, and we’re right in the middle of it, so it’s all about making smart decisions and trying to get through races.”
Lauren Bell, Lowri Thomas, Emma Finucane and Rhianna-Parris-Smith won the women’s team sprint.
(Image credit: Olly Hassell/SWPix)
In the women’s team sprint, Olympic champion Emma Finucane combined with her team-mates Rhianna Parris-Smith, Lowri Thomas and Lauren Bell to win the gold medal.
“I was really happy with how we executed the ride,” Finucane said after the final, which she Parris-Smith and Thomas won by a second. “For the first time riding team sprint together, I think it was a solid ride.”
After Parris-Smith’s strong start out the gates, Finucane pulled out a gap to Thomas in the second lap, leaving her Welsh compatriot to charge through and into the victory turn. “There’s only so much you can do when you have the fastest rider in the world in front of you,” Thomas said. “You’ve just got to catch up at the end.”
In the para-cycling events, Archie Atkinson added a C4-5 elimination race title to the scratch race one he won on Thursday. “That’s two for two,” he said. “I’m on a 100% win streak in racing this year, so I’m very happy.”
There were also wins for Sophie Unwin and Jenny Holl in the women’s tandem sprint, Chris Latham and Morgan Fice-Noyes in the men’s tandem individual pursuit, Fin Graham in the C1-3 elimination race, Elisabeth Simpson in the C1-3 time trial and Kadeena Cox in the C4-5 time trial.
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