Henry Hobbs kept his head and sprinted for gold to win the men\u2019s scratch race on a chaotic day of action at the velodrome.<\/p>\n
The 19-year-old claimed the first senior individual title of his career as he avoided a crash before storming home in a dramatic finish, with teammate Ethan Vernon taking bronze.<\/p>\n
Nine riders were wiped out in a horrific crash on the penultimate lap, with Team England\u2019s Will Tidball one of the victims.<\/p>\n
It sent riders and debris flying across the track but both Hobbs and Vernon were ahead of the incident and powered on to clinch places on the podium, with Australia\u2019s Thomas Cornish earning silver.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m really happy,\u201d said Hobbs, who now has two golds after winning the team pursuit on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously it’s never nice hearing a crash behind but luckily it was behind.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was within the last few laps of the race when it happened so I was really focussed on just trying to win.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo hear a massive crash behind you puts off a bit but I just had to lock back in and get it done.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn’t expected. We won a team gold but to get an individual gold is crazy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt gives me a lot of confidence knowing I’ve got what it takes to win these sorts of races in this sort of field.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s really exciting in terms of where this could take me. Hopefully I can carry on this sort of trajectory and work towards the next few years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hobbs rode around in celebration flying an England flag and was able to enjoy Jerusalem on the podium alongside Vernon, who earned the third Commonwealth Games medal of his career.<\/p>\n
He was able to keep his head as chaos unfolded around him and earn his first individual medal for Team England.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cI wouldn’t say the shock affected my sprint, but I was a bit cautious, and went a bit higher than I probably should have done.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the end, I was a bit late coming into the sprint. It could have been a gold if I committed to the sprint a bit earlier.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was further English success in the women\u2019s tandem B 1000m time trial, as Sophie Unwin won bronze alongside pilot Anna Whitworth-Hay.<\/p>\n
The pair only partnered up six weeks before Glasgow 2026 but found the right groove to finish on the podium behind New Zealand\u2019s Emma Foy and Australia\u2019s Jessica Gallagher.<\/p>\n
Unwin said: \u201cI’m so happy with that. We knew that today was going to be another tight one.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn’t know whether we were going do it or not today, and that wait after our ride was not fun, but worth it.”<\/p>\n
In the men\u2019s sprint, Harry Ledingham-Horn narrowly missed out on a medal with a fourth-place finish.<\/p>\n
The 21-year-old battled through the rounds to face Trinidad and Tobago\u2019s Nicholas Paul in the semi-final and took the first race before the experienced rider came out on top in the last two.<\/p>\n
He was then edged out of the medals by Australian Tayte Ryan and admitted he had nothing left to give after a gruelling day.<\/p>\n
Ledingham-Horn has already won team sprint silver and keirin bronze at his debut Games but insists there is still plenty to learn.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am disappointed,\u201d he said. \u201cI just fell apart. It’s been three really, really long days and today was mental.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy the end of the day, I just had nothing. It is about getting used to longer days with racing back-to-back but I’ll have more to learn from now.”<\/p>\n
James Reid\/Sportsbeat 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Henry Hobbs kept his head and sprinted for gold to win the men\u2019s scratch race on a chaotic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":841456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-841455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=841455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/841456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}