British track cyclist Matthew Richardson, who defected from Australian cycling at the end of the Paris Games, has been withdrawn from this week’s UCI Track World Championships in Shanghai<\/p>\n
Richardson had been earlier named in the British squad for the championships, which run from October 14 to 18, before British Cycling confirmed he had been withdrawn.<\/p>\n
“British Cycling can confirm that Matt Richardson has been withdrawn from the Great Britain Cycling Team squad for the upcoming 2026 Tissot UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Shanghai, China,” a spokesperson said in a statement provided to Reuters.<\/p>\n
The governing body did not give a reason for Richardson’s withdrawal.<\/p>\n
The Times reported that Richardson had been removed from the team amid an investigation into “alleged discriminatory posts and behaviour”.<\/p>\n
Reuters has not independently verified the allegations, and has contacted Rocket Sports, Richardson’s management agency, for comment from the rider.<\/p>\n
Richardson was injured in a crash during the World Series keirin event in Japan and was ruled out from making his highly anticipated England debut at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in July.<\/p>\n
Richardson was born in Maidstone, England, and moved to Australia at the age of nine.<\/p>\n
A week after the closing ceremony of the Paris Games \u2014 where Richardson won silver medals in the individual sprint and men’s keirin and a bronze in the team sprint \u2014 he stunned Australia by announcing his defection.<\/p>\n
In 2025, Richardson became the first rider to break nine seconds for the “flying 200m”, setting a new time of 8.941 seconds.<\/p>\n
Reuters\/ABC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British track cyclist Matthew Richardson, who defected from Australian cycling at the end of the Paris Games, has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":925848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,41565,85,35073,138293],"class_list":["post-925847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-matthew-richardson","tag-sports","tag-track-cycling","tag-uci-track-world-championships"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925847","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=925847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/925848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=925847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=925847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=925847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}