Ireland’s Lara Gillespie has won silver in the women’s scratch race on the opening night of action at the World Track Cycling Championships in Shanghai.<\/p>\n
The Wicklow woman was narrowly beaten to gold by Lorena Wiebes from the Netherlands in a sprint finish.<\/p>\n
The Wicklow rider became Ireland’s first ever female track world champion last year when she took gold in the elimination race.<\/p>\n
“I wouldn’t normally say scratch is my favourite race but I’m really proud of how I rode today, representing Ireland as best I could,” Gillespie said.<\/p>\n
“Of course it was so close and I don’t think I’ve ever been so angry to take silver at a World Championships, but I think I can be proud of how I raced. <\/p>\n
“It gives me confidence for the races coming up.”<\/p>\n
There were no major attacks in the 40-lap race until late when France’s Valentine Fortin made her move with seven to go, with defending champion Wiebes responding.<\/p>\n
Gillespie remained in contention but Wiebes would attack again with two to go and would edge home with Portugal’s Maria Martins in third.<\/p>\n
Gillespie returns to the track on Friday for the Omnium event and Sunday for the points race.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Wednesday, Aoife O’Brien, Emma Jeffers, Esther Wong and Fiona Mangan finished 16th in the team pursuit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland’s Lara Gillespie has won silver in the women’s scratch race on the opening night of action at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":933289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-933288","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\/933288","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=933288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/933289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=933288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=933288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=933288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}