GB’s Morris wins world individual pursuit title

Great Britain’s Anna Morris claimed gold in the women’s individual pursuit on the penultimate day of the Track Cycling World Championships in Denmark.

The 29-year-old trailed Chloe Dygert with three laps to go, but was able to overhaul the American in the final quarter of the race to win by just over three-tenths of a second in a time of three minutes 16.56 seconds.

She told BBC Sport: “I’m in disbelief. Chloe posted an incredible time in the qualifying round and I did a huge personal best, so I wasn’t sure how much more I had to give.

“I felt like I could potentially have gone a bit harder at the start so I went out a little bit harder [in the final], tried to keep it as controlled as I could, and at the end I could hear my team-mates and coach screaming, so I knew I must be close [to winning].

“The calibre of rider that Chloe is, I didn’t think I had much of a chance, so it just shows that if you dig deep and see what you’ve got, sometimes you do surprise yourself.”

Also in Ballerup on Saturday, Sophie Capewell and Katy Marchant took silver and bronze respectively in the women’s 500m time trial, while Katie Archibald and Neah Evans won bronze in the women’s madison.

After winning team sprint gold with Marchant and Emma Finucane on Wednesday, Capewell was pleased with her response after missing out on a medal in the individual sprint on Friday.

“I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I was disappointed with the sprint – not in terms of my execution, but just that I couldn’t finish it off,” she said.

“It was nice to come out today with slightly fresher legs, execute really well and come away with a silver medal.”

Archibald, who missed the Olympics because of a broken leg sustained in a freak accident in her garden, added a madison medal to the women’s team pursuit gold won alongside Morris, Meg Barker and Josie Knight.

Archibald and Evans led from an early stage but, about two-thirds of the way through the 120-lap race, France, the Netherlands and Italy gained a lap on the field to move to the top of the standings.

Denmark did likewise shortly afterwards to assume the lead of the race and were eventually victorious in front of a home crowd, but the British pair took the final available sprint points to finish third.

Evans said: “The madison is chaos. You go in with what you think is the best plan possible and the number of times you have to say ‘that’s not how it’s going to go’ and adapt, it’s so difficult.”