CYCLING

Lara Gillespie of Ireland won the women's points race on the final day of the UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Shanghai, finishing on 42 points to beat Denmark's Amalie Dideriksen by five. Belgium's Shari Bossuyt took bronze with 35 points, and Mexico's Yareli Acevedo Mendoza, the defending champion, finished fourth.

The medals were decided by laps gained. Anna Hicks of the United States went clear first and took an early lap. Bossuyt then attacked on her own and lapped the field, collecting the 20 points that put her in control of the standings for much of the race. Gillespie and Dideriksen each answered by gaining a lap of their own, and from there the podium belonged to those three. With no one else able to break away, the intermediate sprints separated them, and Gillespie finished the strongest of the group to take the title.

The gold is the second world title of Gillespie's career. She won the elimination race at last year's world championships in Santiago, Chile, and took bronze in the points race in 2024. She opened this week with silver in the scratch race behind Lorena Wiebes of the Netherlands, who won that event for the third straight year, and leaves Shanghai with a gold and a silver.

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Anna Morris and Erin Boothman won the women's madison for Great Britain on Saturday at the UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Shanghai, giving Morris her third gold of the week. Millie Couzens beat teammate Josie Knight in an all-British individual pursuit final, and Germany's Pauline Grabosch claimed the women's 1 km time trial for her first elite individual world title. The day lifted Great Britain to six gold medals, the most of any nation, and 11 medals overall.

Morris arrived at the madison already holding rainbow jerseys from Thursday's team pursuit and Friday's omnium. With Boothman, a new pairing for the event, she became the first woman to win the team pursuit, omnium and madison at a single world championships since the women's madison joined the program in 2017. Britain and France broke clear together late in the race and each gained a lap, turning the contest into a two-team duel. Boothman then won the second-to-last sprint to open a nine-point lead over France, and the British pair marked their rivals through the final sprint to finish on 40 points to France's 33. Clara Copponi and Marion Borras took silver for France, while Japan's Tsuyaka Uchino and Maho Kakita edged New Zealand's Bryony Botha and Prudence Fowler for bronze on the final sprint. Britain has now won the event in back-to-back years after Katie Archibald and Maddie Leech took the 2025 title.

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Liying Yuan gave the home crowd in Shanghai the title it wanted on Friday, beating Great Britain's Emma Finucane 2-0 in the women's sprint final at the UCI Track Cycling World Championships. The first race was decided by 0.025 seconds. In the second, Finucane took the front and tried to dictate the race from there, but Yuan jumped clear and won by bike lengths to claim the rainbow jersey in front of her own fans.

It was Yuan's second world title of the week. On Wednesday she rode in the Chinese team sprint that beat Great Britain in the final, a ride in which Sophie Capewell, one of the British starters alongside Finucane, was hampered by a problem with her saddle. Friday made it two defeats in three days for Finucane against Chinese riders, and the second came against a sprinter who swept the final without needing a third ride.

The path to the final ran through two familiar rivals. Yuan beat Japan's Mina Sato in the semifinals, while Finucane got past her British teammate Capewell. The bronze-medal match between the two beaten semifinalists went the full three races, and Sato took the deciding ride by one thousandth of a second, leaving Capewell fourth.

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Demi Vollering finally has the rainbow jersey. The Dutch star attacked alone with 38 kilometers remaining in the 180.1-kilometer World Championship road race in Montréal and appeared capable of riding all the way to gold, but Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney and Elisa Longo Borghini refused to let her disappear. They helped reel Vollering back inside the final 15 kilometers, turning what looked like a long-range coronation into a race she had to win all over again.

Longo Borghini attacked almost immediately after the catch and opened a gap of more than 10 seconds. Vollering helped bring her back on the final ascent of Camillien-Houde, where she and Niewiadoma-Phinney finally separated themselves from the Italian. Niewiadoma-Phinney attacked on one of the final rises but couldn’t shake Vollering, then opened the sprint with roughly 200 meters remaining. Vollering came past her at the line to win her first elite road world title in 4:45:09. Longo Borghini took bronze four seconds later, with newly crowned time-trial world champion Marlen Reusser fourth at eight seconds.

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