March 27, 2011 (Apeldoorn, The Netherlands) – Canadian cycling fans had reason to celebrate on the final day of the 2011 Track World Championships as Tara Whitten, reigning world champion in the Women’s Omnium, defended her title winning gold. “The Omnium is really a very unique event in that it requires so much focus from one event to the next over two days of competition and I’m just so thrilled to come out on top for the second year in a row,” Whitten commented in a press conference following the conclusion of the event.

She began the day ranked second to the Netherland’s Kirsten Wild by a slim margin of two points. Whitten delivered an amazing and confident performance on Sunday, taking second place in both the individiual pursuit and the scratch race.

With a fifth place finish in the 500m time trial, Whitten’s low score was an impressive 23 points, eight points ahead of silver medallist American Individual Pursuit star Sarah Hammer, and 19 points ahead of now 3rd ranked Wild.

The ability to re-focus again and again over the series of events makes the Omnium particularly challenging. “I think for sure the mental part of my prep is huge especially in the Omnium – you really have to be able to take each event as it comes and if it doesn’t go exactly as you planned you have to get over it really fast and refocus on the next event,” explained Whitten.

“This year I felt more prepared than ever because we now have a sports psychologist here who has really helped me put my plan in place so that I felt focused on each event individually, and I was optimally prepared for each race.”

Whitten continued to praise the evolution of the Canadian Track Program. “We had a new member of our team this year, Clara Hughes, who obviously has seen a lot in her career, and she kept saying over and over that she’s never seen Canadian cycling at the level that this track program is at, and that the staff here are the best that she’s ever seen,” said Whitten. “That really meant a lot to our staff, and spoke to the fact that we’ve come such a long way and we have what we need to succeed now. That’s something that we weren’t able to say a couple of years ago.”

A smiling Canadian Track Coach Richard Wooles was ecstatic with Whitten’s performance. “She really held it together so well. The pace is hard and fast but she was prepared and confident. That’s her third World Championship medal and quite an accomplisment,” Wooles told Pedal in a phone interview.

Wooles added that the whole team is riding high and coming together well. “We hoped for more from Zach of course – he’s shown he can do it on the World Cup circuit now we just have to dial in his conditioning better and take it up a level. All round we’ve developed a great squad now with more depth than ever before that’s creating a strong team synergy as we build towards London 2012.”

The 2011 Track World Championships wound down with the Men’s 1000m Time Trial, the women’s Keirin, and the men’s Madison. Australia added two more world titles to their haul, and local spectators enjoyed seeing Dutch athletes pick up another two medals on top of Wild’s Omnium bronze.

Stefan Nimke of Germany claimed the world title in the men’s 1000m Time Trial, winning in a time of 1:00.793. On Nimke’s heels were local Dutch athlete Teun Mulder, who picked up the silver, and France’s Francois Pervis, who settled for bronze, a mere five one-hundreths of a second behind Mulder.

Australian sprint star Anna Meares takes home the title in the women’s Keirin, over silver medallist Olga Panarina (Belarousse), with Clara Sanchez of France winng bronze. Notable British Sprinter Victoria Pendleton was eliminated from the medal finals in the second round, and had to settle for seventh place.

In the men’s 50km Madison, the Australian pair of Cameron Meyer and Leigh Howard reclaimed their World title. Along with the Czech team of Martin Blaha and Jiri Hochmann, the Australian pair took a lap on the field, a critical move that put these two teams into first and second place respectively, despite relatively low point scores by each. Howard and Meyer collected eight points, while Blaha and Hochmann picked up only one point. The Dutch team of Theo Bos and Peter Schep picked up 21 points, and at one lap down that was good enough for the bronze.

Full results here.