MELBOURNE, Australia, 31 May 2004 — Dutchman Theo Bos climbed off the floor to dethrone French world champion Laurent Gane and win the prestige sprint gold medal on the final day of the world track cycling championships here yesterday.
Bos, who twice crashed heavily to the track on the way to his quarterfinal victory on Saturday, went on to conquer the mighty seven-time world gold medalist Gane 2-0 in the gold medal ride-off.
The former junior world kilometer champion refused to be daunted by the occasion and twice furiously powered to the line ahead of Gane, who was a member of the gold-medal winning French in the team sprint on Wednesday.
The plucky Dutchman claimed Netherlands’ sole gold medal of the five-day championships with France finishing the top nation with three gold and two silver.
Bos did it the hard way, recovering from two jolting spills in his win over Briton Jamie Staff and downing local hero Ryan Bayley before his partisan home crowd 2-1 in the semifinal before trumping Gane. Bayley came from losing the first leg to beat Poland’s Damian Zielinski for the bronze medal in the sprint.
Britain, Australia, Russia and New Zealand all came away from the championships with two gold medals 10 weeks from the Athens Olympic Games.
Anna Meares draped an Australian flag around her shoulders and soaked up the thunderous acclaim of her home crowd after winning the women’s 500m time trial gold medal yesterday.
Meares held the best time of 34.342 seconds and had to sweat it out with seven riders left in the competition. She couldn’t watch as each challenge to her standard came and went including two-time world champion Natallia Tsylinskaya of Belarus, who finished fifth.
World record holder Jiang Yonghua of China took silver with 34.675 and Lithuania’s Simona Krupeckaite was third in 34.788.
Cuban Yoanka Gonzalez broke the European stranglehold on endurance events at the championships with a stunning victory in the women’s scratch race over 10 kilometers.
