The organisers of the track World Cup in Cali, Colombia will be hoping for another eventful set of events on day two, with the races getting off to a headline-grabbing start yesterday with the establishment of a new world record.
The session begins with qualification races for the women’s individual pursuit and omnium events, then continues with the women’s sprint, men’s keirin, women’s pursuit finals and men’s omnium finals.
Yesterday's world record was set by the German men’s team sprint trio of Stefan Nimke, Maximilian Levy and René Enders, who improved the previous record of 42.950 set by Great Britain in the 2008 Olympic Games, clocking 42.914 seconds in qualifying. This was 1.02 second faster than the Team Erdgas trio they would square up against in the finals, and they easily beat them there.
Six other finals took place yesterday; Francois Pervis (France) beat the Kiwi Simon Van Velthooven for the men’s 1km TT title, while Spain’s Unai Elorriaga was quicker than the Belgian Ingmar De Poortere in the points race. The New Zealand quartet of Sam Bewley, Aaron Gate, Marc Ryan and Jesse Sergent took the team pursuit after the Australian team crashed out in the final.
The women’s equivalent was won by the Britons Laura Trott, Wendy Houvenaghel and Sarah Storey, while the team sprint went to Kristina Vogel and Miriam Welte (Germany) ahead of Ukrainians Tsos Olena and Shulika Lyubov.
The Belgian Kelly Druyts beat Katarzyna Pawlowska (Poland) in the women’s scratch race.
The competition continues today, and ends tomorrow. The track World Cups are a very important element of the fight for Olympics places.