Less than 24 hours after she took fourth in the women's scratch race in the European track championships, saying afterwards that she was 'gutted' to miss a medal, Lydia Gurley bounced back to land silver in the Madison event on Sunday.
She and namesake Lydia Boylan took on more experienced track riders and triumphed in Berlin. They rode superbly during the event, gaining two laps on many of their rivals and thus leading the event. However, the British duo Elinor Barker and Ellie Mae Dickson won the final sprint and moved ahead of them in the points.
They ended up with 58 points, eight more than Gurley and Boylan. Bronze went to the Dutch riders, who amassed 46 points.
Gurley took bronze in the scratch race at the World Cup in Colombia back in January. Boylan has had most of her success on the road, including winning three consecutive Irish national road race titles and a stage of the Semana Ciclista Valenciana earlier this year.
Meanwhile Nicolas Roche is performing superbly in the Tour of Guangxi in China. The BMC Racing Team rider attacked early on the final climb on stage four and got a gap, but the Belgian Tim Wellens (Lotto Soudal) and the Dutchman Bauke Mollema (Trek-Segafredo) worked together to get up to him and then pushed on to take first and second.
Roche was third, four seconds behind Wellens, and jumps from 17th to third overall. He is nine seconds behind Wellens with two stages remaining, while Mollema is five seconds ahead of him. Roche leads the mountains classification.
“Daniel [Oss] made it a hard pace going into the climb and I knew that it flattened out a bit with two kilometres to go so that would be a good place to make a move,” Roche said.
“I attacked and went clear but was caught with about 800 metres to go by Tim Wellens (Lotto Soudal). Wellens was stronger and rode myself and Bauke Mollema (Trek-Segafredo) off his wheel with 500m to go.
“You never know what can happen in the final two days with the bonus seconds. It’s going to be quite tough as the intermediate sprints are well placed. But, you just never know which these stages and on these big roads.”
