Gold and world record in the team sprint at the start of the World Championships: The German women’s track cyclists around Emma Hinze are continuing their dream series in Paris.
With the gold in sight, Emma Hinze unpacked her crazy turbo again: The track bike queen led the German team to a dream start at the World Cup just outside Paris and triumphed with the sprint team in an outstanding manner.
With two fabulous world records in round one and in the final, Hinze, Lea Friedrich and Pauline Grabosch raced to successfully defend their title and thus continued an incredible series.
In the final, the German trio clearly won against China on the 2024 Olympic track in 45.967 seconds and undercut their almost hour-old world record from the semifinals. There “final woman” Hinze and Co. remained in 45.983 81 thousandths below their own mark from the 2021 World Cup triumph in Roubaix (46.064).
For Hinze it was the sixth World Cup gold of her career. This means that the German short-term drivers have been unbeaten at world championships since 2019. In 2020 and 2021, all four world championship titles on the short distances (sprint, team sprint, keirin, 500 m time trial) went to Hinze, Friedrich and/or Grabosch.
Hinze and Friedrich each have three more gold chances in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. The first two laps in the individual sprint are scheduled for Thursday.
Men’s team finished fourth
The men’s sprint team with Stefan Bötticher, Maximilian Dörnbach and Nik Schröter surprisingly reached the small final, but lost there to the French. The trio could be quite satisfied with fourth place.
Lea Lin Teutenberg had previously taken a good seventh place in the first medal decision of the scratch title fights, the Italian Martina Fidanza successfully defended her title.
In the team pursuit, the two Tokyo Olympic champions Mieke Kröger and Franziska Brauße, together with their young colleagues Lena Charlotte Reißner and Teutenberg, reached the first round on Thursday in fifth place in the newly formed German foursome. The medal decision will also be made on Thursday.
Lisa Brennauer, who retired after the European Championships in Munich, and Lisa Klein, who ended her season, are missing from the gold four at the summer games in Tokyo. Laura üßmilch, world champion in 2021 with Kröger, Brausse and Brennauer in Roubaix, is also absent from the Tour de France as a result of her fall.