April 16, 2017 (Hong Kong) – Jasmin Duehring was Canada’s top finisher on the final day of the 2017 Track World Championships, in Hong Kong, on Sunday. Duehring finished sixth in the women’s Points Race after briefly leading earlier in the event.

Duehring scored points in the first 40 laps of the race that put her in the lead, however, she missed the move that saw the eventual top two finishers – Elinor Barker of Great Britain and Sarah Hammer of the United States – take a lap on the field.  Duehring continued to ride aggressively, but fell to sixth in the final standings after 100 laps of racing.

“I came here to win, I’m not going to pretend otherwise,” said Duehring.  “I think I was leading the race at one point, but it was a really hard race and I think I just blew up a little bit.  I missed the group of two riders that took a lap on the field, and that was the race right there.  I’m definitely disappointed, but I’m trying to keep perspective; coming off two Olympic cycles without a break, my goal was to take a step back, get married and go back to school and finish my degree.”

In other competition, Kate O’Brien failed to advance out of the first round of the women’s Keirin, while Stefan Ritter finished 13th in the men’s 1000 metre Time Trial.  Ritter, racing in his first world championships after moving up from the Junior ranks, set a personal best sea level time with his ride.

“To be able to finish 13th in the Kilo at my first elite World Championships is incredible. I’m very happy with that result. The ride itself went according to plan and going into the last lap I was ranked 5th but just didn’t have the legs to maintain that position. Looking ahead to next season now,” said Ritter.

“It is correct that this is the first time we haven’t won a medal at Worlds since 2012,” agreed Jacques Landry, Chief Technical Officer at Cycling Canada. “We decided to take an approach at the start of this Olympic quad to give riders a bit more liberty to recover from Rio.  Some of them have come not necessarily 100% ready for these Worlds.  We wanted to give them a bit more rest.  We’ll need to ramp it up for Tokyo, but there’s plenty of time for that and we aren’t too worried.”

“But you also have to look at some of the performances from the sprinters – they have put down some good personal bests here, including the Women’s Team Sprint in fifth; our best ever result for that event.  So we are showing progress.  Some of this was anticipated, but we also can’t ignore the fact that we had some bad luck with crashes in the Men’s Team Pursuit and Steph Roorda going down in the Omnium.  Those are things that we can’t really control; it’s unfortunate, but it happens,” Landry concluded.