Track Cycling – World Championship 2026 [DAY 5]

October 18, 2026

Track Cycling – World Championship 2026 – Day 5 – Shanghai Velodrome on Chongming Island, Shanghai, China 🇨🇳

The UCI Track World Championships is the premier annual event in track cycling, organised by the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI). First held in 1893, the Championships have a history spanning more than 130 years. Winners are awarded the iconic Rainbow Jersey, the symbol of a reigning UCI World Champion. Reigning UCI World Champions are entitled to wear the rainbow jersey for the full year until the following UCI World Championships – but only when competing in the discipline, category and speciality for which they won it. Meanwhile former UCI World Champions have the privilege of displaying rainbow bands on the sleeves and on the collar of their team jersey, to recognise their past victory.

The 2026 UCI Track World Championships drew to a close on Sunday with five major prizes still up for grabs across a range of disciplines, from the points race to the madison and keirin.

Rather than any one nation closing out the Worlds with a dominant showing, the rainbow jerseys were shared across a host of countries. Harrie Lavreysen scored the Netherlands’ fifth gold of the week in the men’s sprint final, while Lara Gillespie followed her 2025 triumph with another, albeit in a different competition.

Elsewhere, Denmark prevailed in the men’s madison, Germany’s Tim Torn Teutenberg came out on top in the men’s elimination race, and Alina Lysenko gave the individual neutral athletes their first and only medal of Worlds with a women’s keirin victory.

Women’s Points Race
Ireland’s Lara Gillespie made it two rainbow jerseys in two years, with a point race triumph to follow on from her elimination race victory last year.

Gillespie enjoyed a tremendous forward leap from her 2025 result in the same event, where she finished in 12th place on 25 points, well behind world champion Yareli Acevedo of Mexico on 63.

This year, Giullespie showed her form with a table-topping 42 points, five clear of second-place finisher Amalie Dideriksen (Denmark). Shari Bossuyt (Belgium) took the bronze medal two points behind on 35 points.

Men’s Sprint
Dutch racer Harrie Lavreysen faced off against Australia’s Leigh Hoffmann in the gold medal race, with Lavreysen starting as the favourite having won the title in each year since 2019 and having beaten Hoffman last year.

He duly delivered on that promise, beating Hoffmann by 0.093 seconds in the first race and then doing better still in the second to win by 0.183 seconds.

The win marks 23 world titles for the 29-year-old in a glittering track career, which also includes five Olympic titles.

In the bronze medal race, Japan’s Kaiya Ota went head-to-head with Nicolas Paul (Trinidad and Tobago). As was the case in the gold medal matchup, one rider won both races, with Ota beating Paul by 0.052 seconds in the first and 0.256 in the second to seal bronze.

Men’s Elimination Race
24-year-old German racer Tim Torn Teutenberg picked up the second rainbow jersey of his young career in the elimination, adding this world title to the madison he won two years ago.

This year brought a new look podium compared to 2025, with reigning champion Elia Viviani having retired from racing.

Teutenberg beat Denmark’s Tobias Hansen to claim the rainbow stripes, while Jules Hesters grabbed bronze ahead of 19-year-old American racer Ashlin Barry.

Women’s Keirin
Alina Lysenko picked up the only medal – and so the only gold – for the individual neutral athletes in the women’s keirin. The world title is the Russian racer’s first after she scored bronze in the sprint last year.

Lysenko beat Lee Sophie Friedrich (Germany) to the title by a minuscule margin of just 0.006 seconds. Emma Finucane of Great Britain rounded out the podium, 0.014 seconds off Lysenko and 0.099 seconds behind fourth-placed Lijuan Wang (China).

The reigning world champion, Japan’s Mina Sato, wasn’t in contention for another rainbow jersey here. She instead dropped down the rankings and finished eighth overall after taking second place in the 7-12 positions race.

Men’s Madison
The final event of the Track Worlds saw the men’s teams face off in the madison.

Belgium were defending the title after Lindsay De Vylder and Fabio Van Den Bossche triumphed last year. They missed another medal by just one point this time around, though, finishing in fourth place with 51 points.

Ahead of them lay German pairing Moritz Augenstein and Roger Kluge. They ended the race with 52 points to narrowly grab bronze.

The top of the table was not close, as Portugal’s Iuri Leitão and Ivo Oliveira raced to 67 points and the silver medal. The dominant Carl-Frederik Bévort and Lasse Norman Leth came out on top with 88 points to win the world title and take their nation to third in the final medal table, behind only Great Britain and the Netherlands.

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