{"id":70630,"date":"2025-08-15T16:34:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T16:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/70630\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T16:34:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T16:34:11","slug":"matthew-richardson-breaks-200m-flying-start-world-record-defector-from-australia-to-great-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/70630\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew Richardson breaks 200m flying start world record, defector from Australia to Great Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"

British track cyclist Matthew Richardson became the first person to break the elusive nine-second mark in the 200-metre flying start on Friday morning (AEST), setting a new world record with a time of 8.941 seconds at the Konya Velodrome in Turkey.<\/p>\n

The 26-year-old Richardson, who won three medals for Australia at the Paris 2024 Olympics Games before switching allegiance to Britain<\/a>, surpassed the previous record of 9.088 seconds, which was switching allegiance to Britain<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was basically just a passenger. I gave the bike a bit of direction, and it was just steering itself almost,\u201d Richardson said in a British Cycling press release.<\/p>\n

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\"Matthew<\/p>\n

Matthew Richardson poses with a sign showing his world record time after breaking the 200-metre flying start sprint record.\u00a0Aleyna Kartal\/Anadolu via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cI know this track can be quite a handful out of the corners, so I was cautious in those spots, but other than that, it was just going as hard as I could.\u201d<\/p>\n

Richardson first broke the world record when he clocked 9.091 seconds in qualifying at Paris 2024, but Lavreysen quickly beat his time.<\/p>\n

In March, and on the same track in Konya, Richardson again came close to claiming the record with a time of 9.041, only to have it ruled ineligible by the UCI because he had strayed into an out-of-bounds area<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The England-born Richardson had a successful Paris Games, winning two silver medals in the individual sprint and keirin events, as well as a bronze in the team sprint.<\/p>\n

Following his Olympic performance in the green and gold, he shocked Australian cycling by announcing his switch to compete for Britain.<\/p>\n

AusCycling announced in November of last year that he had been banned from representing Australia again<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Richardson moved from the UK to Perth at the age of nine, before taking up cycling with Midland Cycling Club and later joining the Western Australian Institute of Sport.<\/p>\n

The 26-year-old will have another go at lowering his mark on Saturday. <\/p>\n

“Oh, you thought I was done?? Noooooooooo sir. Tomorrow I will try and break my own wr. Me vs me. Let’s have it,” Richardson wrote in a post on Instagram.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Will Bjergfelt of Britain also set a world record in the C5 UCI Hour Record, becoming the first para-cyclist to break the 50-kilometre barrier by covering 51.471 kilometres in 60 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British track cyclist Matthew Richardson became the first person to break the elusive nine-second mark in the 200-metre…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":["post-70630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}