Britain’s Anna Morris wins European track cycling gold in world record time

  • Individual pursuit champion sets mark twice in one day
  • Morris is first woman to claim title in new 4km format

Britain’s Anna Morris won gold in the individual pursuit at the European track championships in Belgium after breaking the world record twice in one day.

The Welsh cyclist set a new world’s best of 4min 28.306sec in the qualifiers and bettered that in the final in Heusden-Zolder as she beat Italy’s Vittoria Guazzini in 4:25.874.

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Teams pull out of Étoile de Bessège cycling race after car enters course

  • Ineos Grenadiers among teams to withdraw in France
  • Vehicle came towards the peloton at a roundabout

Several teams have pulled out of the Étoile de Bessèges cycling race in France after a car came towards the peloton at a roundabout during the third stage on Friday.

Ineos Grenadiers said: “The safety of our riders and staff is of paramount importance. Following multiple incidents of public vehicles entering the race course our riders, together with other teams, have decided not to complete today’s stage at #EDB2025.”

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Cycling’s governing body bans carbon monoxide rebreathing on health grounds

  • Gas can be misused to artificially increase performance
  • UCI’s ban will come into effect on 10 February

Cycling’s governing body has banned the repeated use of carbon monoxide rebreathing that some riders allegedly misuse to artificially increase their performances.

Following a meeting of its executive committee on Saturday in France, the UCI said it approved a ban on repeated inhalation to protect the health of riders. The ban starts on 10 February.

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Germany’s world track cyclists suffer multiple fractures after being hit by car

  • Injured men include Benjamin Boos and Bruno Kessler
  • 89-year-old driver collided with cyclists in Mallorca

Six riders in Germany’s track cycling team were treated in a hospital on Monday after being struck by a car driven by an 89-year-old man. Their injuries were not life-threatening, though they included multiple fractures, the team said in a statement.

The six injured men included the 2024 track world championship medallists Benjamin Boos and Bruno Kessler. The individual riders’ injuries were not specified.

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Italian cyclist Sara Piffer, 19, dies after being hit by car during training ride

  • Mendelspeck rider was training in Trentino region
  • Piffer’s brother also injured during incident

Sara Piffer, a promising 19-year-old Italian rider, died during a training outing on Friday, the Italian Professional Cyclists’ Association (ACCPI) said, after she was reportedly hit by a car.

The Team Mendelspeck rider Piffer was struck by the vehicle on a minor road during a training session in Italy’s northern Trentino region, according to Italian media.

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Mystery surrounds Caleb Ewan’s future after top cyclist erased from team roster

  • Australian disappears from Team Jayco AlUla’s squad page
  • No explanation forthcoming with Tour Down Under starting this week

He is among Australia’s greatest sprinters – winner of five Tour de France stages and half a dozen other grand tour stage wins. But at the moment, Caleb Ewan is nowhere to be found.

Last week, Ewan’s profile was featured on the team page of his World Tour outfit, Australia-registered Team Jayco AlUla. By this week, the diminutive sprint star has disappeared from the website. Of the team’s 30 confirmed roster spots, there are 29 riders listed – with one conspicuously empty slot on the webpage where Ewan’s image once appeared.

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Rik Van Looy obituary

Belgian cyclist and the first to triumph in the five great one-day classics known as the Monuments

Rik Van Looy, who has died aged 90, was the most dominant one-day cycle racer of the 1950s and 60s, nicknamed “the Emperor of Herentals” (after the Belgian city in which he lived) or “the Wheel Breaker”. He ended his 18-year career with a tally of 371 professional road race victories, which remains second only to that of Eddy Merckx. A double world road race champion, he was the first cyclist to triumph in the five great one-day classics known today as the Monuments.

He began racing at 14 and was lapped five times in his first race, but improved rapidly to win the Belgian amateur championship twice; he took a bronze medal in the amateur world championship at Lugano in 1953. He turned professional a week later and won his first two races in the following 48 hours.

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American BMX star Hannah Roberts wins fifth straight freestyle world title

  • Roberts rebounds from Paris heartbreak with world title
  • Tokyo Olympic champion Martin wins third world gold

American Hannah Roberts roared back from her Paris Olympic heartbreak on Saturday by claiming her fifth consecutive BMX freestyle world title at the UCI Urban Cycling World Championships in Abu Dhabi.

Roberts, 22, set the bar with a 95.70-point first run, a score no competitor could beat. Her second run scored 94.58, a mark that would have been high enough to win the event.

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Keely Hodgkinson wins BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2024 – as it happened

The Olympic 800m champion took the big prize in the BBC’s annual jamboree, with darts star Luke Littler second and Joe Root third

Root has a live chat from his hotel in New Zealand. It’s just gone 8am there, the morning after the Test series ended, and he’s looking a little bleary-eyed. Only once, in 2021, has he scored more runs than he has this year. “It’s been a hell of a journey, but it seems to get more and more enjoyable,” he says.

Jimmy Anderson on Root. You won’t get many better quotes than this.

I can’t think of a better role model for the game of cricket. I’ve got children, I’d love for them to grow up and be that sort of person.

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Mark Cavendish: ‘Spoty lifetime award is nice but as a competitor you want to be shortlisted’

Cycling’s finest sprinter says he achieved all he could in the sport, and that he is lucky to retire on his own terms

“Oh mate, for the last couple of years I’ve been broken,” Mark Cavendish says with a throaty chuckle as he considers the state of his body after decades on the bike. Cavendish will turn 40 next May and his extraordinary career finally ended last month when he won his final race in Singapore to follow his record-breaking 35th Tour de France stage victory this summer.

Cavendish is the greatest sprint cyclist the sport has seen and all the blurring wins and moments of history mean there are no regrets even when he feels so battered. “I have to do so much maintenance of my body now,” he says, “and I feel it most when I go running. It gives me a perspective on how many hours I’ve spent crouched over the handlebars while I’m trying to run. That’s when I realise how I’ve been in the same physical position for the best part of 30 years and at the highest level for nearly 20 years.

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Rohan Dennis pleads guilty to charge relating to death of Olympic cyclist wife Melissa Hoskins

Adelaide Olympian faces up to seven years in jail after pleading to lesser charge of creating likelihood of harm

Cyclist Rohan Dennis will not be found responsible for the death of his wife – fellow Olympian Melissa Hoskins – but could be jailed for up to seven years after pleading guilty to a new charge.

Dennis, 34, had appeared in the Adelaide magistrates court on Tuesday to answer charges of dangerous driving causing death and an aggravated charge of driving without due care. He was arrested after Hoskins, 32, was struck by his vehicle in front of their home at Medindie, in Adelaide’s inner north, on 30 December 2023.

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Luke Littler named on six-strong Sports Personality of the Year shortlist

  • Teenager could become youngest winner since 1958
  • Hodgkinson, Yee, Bellingham, Root and Storey included

Luke Littler will have a shot at becoming the youngest winner of the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year award for more than 60 years, after being named on a six-strong shortlist headed by the Paris 2024 Olympics stars Keely Hodgkinson and Alex Yee.

The England footballer Jude Bellingham, the cricketer Joe Root and the Paralympian Sarah Storey make up the list. But, surprisingly, there is no place for Mark Cavendish, in a year when he broke Eddy Merckx’s record for Tour de France stage wins.

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‘I kept his secret’: Emma Finucane on pushing past limits and her boyfriend’s cycling defection

Triple Olympic medallist is fiercely honest about the storm of emotion that engulfed her in the Paris velodrome and being unable to tell her family Matthew Richardson would soon be joining her in Britain

‘It’s a good question,” Emma Finucane says as she thinks searchingly of the most important lesson she has learned about herself after a year like no other for the 21-year-old sprint cyclist. She won three Olympic medals, including one gold, and two world champion titles while carrying a secret she could not even share with her family for many months.

Finucane’s fierce honesty and questioning introspection is rare in such a young rider who is in the foothills of a career that may yet transcend the achievements of British Olympic track riders led by Jason and Laura Kenny and Chris Hoy. Her candour and intelligence soon emerge as she charts the physical and psychological depths explored at the Paris Olympics before she talks openly about the way she and her boyfriend, Matthew Richardson, who won three sprint medals for Australia at the Games, knew he would soon switch countries and move to GB Cycling. That decision shocked and dismayed his former teammates and supporters.

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Remco Evenepoel sustains multiple fractures after collision with post van

  • Bike collided with the open door of vehicle in Belgium
  • Incident broke double Olympic champion’s bike in two

The double Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel suffered fractures to his rib, right shoulder blade and hand, his team, Soudal-QuickStep, said on Tuesday. According to ­Belgian media, the 24-year-old crashed into an open door of a postal vehicle while he was on a training ride in Oetingen.

Evenepoel, who claimed gold in the men’s road race and time trial at the Paris Olympics, was conscious after the incident, with the impact breaking his bike, reports said.

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Matthew Richardson’s grand cycling betrayal will leave an asterisk on his glittering career | Kieran Pender

After issuing the findings of its review into the Olympic hero’s defection to Great Britain, AusCycling’s upset is understandable

Conflicting national allegiances in sport are no simple thing. It is hardly unreasonable for someone with more than one national background to feel competing tugs when it comes to flying the flag on the international stage. Emotion and pragmatism collide to force hard decisions.

Australia is a deeply multicultural nation – more than one in four Australians were born overseas, while millions more have parents born elsewhere. We are a nation of complex sporting allegiances. I have dual nationalities; if it wasn’t for the fact that I have all the sporting talent of a gnat, I might have to consider which country to represent.

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