March 16, 2018 (Ottawa, ON) – Cycling Canada has selected a small but powerful team of four riders for the UCI Para-cycling Track World Championships, which will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on March 22-25. Canada won seven medals, four gold and three silver, at the 2017 Para Track Worlds.

The team will include the three athletes who won medals last year; men’s C2 category rider Tristen Chernove of Cranbrook, BC, men’s C1 athlete Ross Wilson of Edmonton, Alberta, and women’s C4 rider Marie-Claude Molnar of St-Hubert, Quebec. Joining them will be NextGen athlete Keely Shaw of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, who will be classified prior to competition.

Chernove and Wilson will each be defending their two world titles in the 1000m Time Trial and Individual Pursuit. Molnar won three silver medals at the 2017 world championships, in the 500m Time Trial, Individual Pursuit and Scratch Race. Chernove won silver and bronze medals and Wilson won a silver medal on this same track at the Rio Paralympic Games.

“The Para team is looking forward to going back to the Rio velodrome, where our team lived great experiences at the Paralympics in 2016,” said Sebastien Travers, Para-cycling Head Coach at Cycling Canada. “We are going to these championships to try to maintain our world champion titles, but we are also looking forward to gathering UCI points, as this is the first event on the track to qualify for the Tokyo Paralympics.”

“Our team is looking very good with some of our veterans, but we are also seizing the opportunity to get up-and-coming athletes a first exposure to international classification.”