Wiggle Honda Pro Cycling will have three riders representing their countries at the 2015 UCI World Track Cycling Championships, which start on Wednesday, February 18th, at the French National Velodrome in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, to the southwest of Paris. Olympic Bronze Medallist Nettie Edmondson will be part of the Australian Team Pursuit Squad, while both Edmondson and Belgian Jolien D’hoore will ride the Omnium competition. Italian former two-time Road World Champion Giorgia Bronzini will ride the Points Race, the event in which she took her first-ever senior rainbow jersey back in 2009.
“So things have changed,” explained Edmondson, who was originally only scheduled to ride one event. “I’m now riding the Team pursuit – which is where we got the Aussie record – and the Omnium.
Edmondson was recently part of the four-woman Pursuit Team that lowered its national record to 4mins 20.999secs at the Australian Championships in Melbourne, Australia. The new mark is just four seconds slower than the time set by Great Britain in the altitude of Aguascalientes, Mexico, giving the team a genuine chance of taking the rainbow jersey this week.
The Team Pursuit begins with qualification in the very first session on Wednesday morning; the first knockout round of the competition takes place on Thursday morning, with the finals the same evening.
“Things are really positive for the Aussie ladies this year,” Edmondson said. “We’ve changed coaches around, altered our training and our times are coming down drastically; hence the Aussie record. We’re really hoping to improve on our silver and bronze medals from the last few years and come out on top for the first time since 2010!
“I’m also excited for the Omnium,” she added. “I wasn’t planning on riding it this year, but due to a few changes in the program I’ve had the call up, and I’m excited to give it a crack, especially in the new format at a world champs!”
The Women’s Omnium will begin with a 15km qualification Scratch Race on Friday morning, with the competition proper starting on Saturday. The six-event competition will be run over two days, as usual, with the final Points Race taking place on Sunday afternoon.
Belgian Champion D’hoore competed as a member of the Wiggle Honda Pro Cycling team in the Tour of Qatar at the beginning of this month, but had already raced in the black and orange colours in her dominant performance in her national Omnium Championship. This result, as well as overall victory in the 2014/15 World Cup, gives the 24-year-old confidence ahead of this week’s competition.
“Qatar has been good with some good results,” said D’hoore, after her sixth place overall in the desert race. “I could do my work for the team so it was the perfect prep for Track Worlds. It’s all about fine tuning the last bits this week before I’m leaving to Paris on Saturday.
“I’ve done already many World Championships on the track,” she added. “But this time it’s different. For the first time I really have high ambitions to do well in the Omnium. The last months gave me a lot of confidence, with second in the European Champs, first in the Guadalajara World Cup and second in the London World Cup.
“I’m really motivated and looking forward to next week!”
Bronzini will be the first Wiggle Honda Pro Cycling athlete to compete in a rainbow jersey race this week, with the Points Race taking place on Wednesday Evening. As well as her senior World Title from 2009, the 31-year-old Italian took the Junior Points Race title in 2001, and has also won the European Championships at both junior and under-23 level.
Her exceptional sprint has also seen Bronzini take several World Cup victories in recent years, as well as the overall World Cup classifications in 2009/10 and 2010/11. Most recently she finished with the Bronze medal in the 2013 World Championship Points Race in Minsk, Belarus.
