Lara Gillespie will face a familiar rival in her first of three attempts to win another rainbow jersey at this week’s UCI Track World Championships in Shanghai. A year on from becoming the first Irish woman to claim a UCI world cycling title in any event, the Wicklow rider has arrived at the Shanghai Velodrome on Chongming Island with confidence soaring, by her own admission riding faster and stronger than ever before.
The first test of that will come in Wednesday’s scratch (11.59am Irish time), arguably the simplest of track events, a 10km bunch race where the first rider across the line wins. The favourite is Dutch star Lorena Wiebes, who last Sunday completed her clean sweep of stage victories on stage three of the Tour of Chongming Island, the last stop on the women’s World Tour this season.
Gillespie, however, pressed Wiebes right up to the finish line in those last two stages, earning her second position on general classification – her best result in a World Tour stage race. The 25-year-old afterwards described those two close finishes as her “best sprint efforts ever”, and there’s no doubt she’s getting closer to Wiebes following those efforts.
Her breakthrough win came in the elimination race at last year’s UCI World Track Championships in Santiago, Chile. This time, Gillespie will also ride the omnium on Friday (a combination of four events, starting at 5.35am Irish time), before finishing up with Sunday’s points race (7am Irish time), which covers 25km.
Since winning in Santiago, she has become the first Irish rider to complete all three major stage races for women – finishing fourth in the points classification in the Giro d’Italia, having taken on both the Tour de France Femmes and La Vuelta Femenina last year. She then won two Irish national titles in June (the time trial and road race) and finished third in the Tour of Poland.
Emma Jeffers is also at the UCI Track World Championships in Shanghai and will contest the kilometre time trial on Saturday. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho
She leads a five-strong Irish team in Shanghai that also includes Aoife O’Brien, returning to her best after an injury-dented 2025, who is focusing on the elimination race (11.30am Thursday).
Emma Jeffers will contest the kilometre time trial, one of the four pure sprint events (qualifying 4am Saturday), with Fiona Mangan taking on the individual pursuit (qualifying Saturday 6.25am). O’Brien, Jeffers and Mangan will also feature in the team pursuit (first round Thursday, 10.05am), joined by Esther Wong, who took silver in the individual pursuit at the recent Aigle 3-Day event in Switzerland.