Australia takes triple gold at CWG
Tuesday was the first of four days of track cycling at the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi and the Australian team finished the day with all three gold medals after three record-breaking times. Jack Bobridge
won the individual pursuit and set a new record in the qualification race. Anna Meares broke the 500m women’s time-trial record and Scott Sunderland broke the men’s kilometre time-trial record, both earning gold medals for Australia.
The day’s competitions began with the four kilometre individual pursuit qualification race, where Bobridge had already been tagged as a favourite. The Australian finished the race in 4:14.845 to beat the
record previously set by Brad McGee in 2002. Jesse Sergent of New Zealand was the runner-up, just under two minutes behind.
Michael Hepburn and Sam Bewley finished in third and fourth, respectively, and raced one-on-one for the bronze medal. Bewley was caught by 19-year-old Hepburn, who took the bronze medal for Australia.
Then Bobridge and Sergent went one-on-one and the Australian finished less than half a second ahead of the silver-medalist.
"I'm only 21 but I've done three world titles and I have done a lot of world-class times, and I feel a little bit of pressure to perform," said Bobridge. "To come out here and perform and actually live
up to it gives us real motivation for the team pursuit. To get the record off McGee was fantastic. McGee showed his class every year he rode in the pursuit, and any record you break is fantastic."
The next competition was the women’s 500m time-trial. 27-year-old Anne Meares, Athens Olympics track champion, set a new record for the second time, breaking her own record set in 2006 with a new time
of 33.758 seconds. The silver medal was won by another Australian, Kaarle McCulloch with 34.780 and the bronze was taken by Welsh rider Becky James with 35.236.
"I have improved a lot since Melbourne four years ago," said Meares. "In four years, that's a significant time gain in this event, I'm very pleased with that. It's a great feeling to be able to walk away
with a Commonwealth Games gold medal. It's a result of a lot of hard work, not only from myself, but a team of people really that help gut us on the track."
The third gold medal went to Sunderland, with him setting another Commonwealth Games record by finished the men’s kilometre time-trial in 1:01.411 and ensured that Australia would hold more than half the
medals after the first day. Mohd Rizal Tisin of Malaysia took the silver and Dawkins Edward James of New Zealand took the bronze.
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