Belgium's team of
Lotte Kopecky and
Shari Bossuyt have been crowned Women's Madison World Champions in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines at the
UCI Track World Championships.
Always one of the more chaotic track races, there was an early disruption due to a broken light which meant the back straight was covered in darkness and after a couple of crashes the riders were called off the track and the race was brought to a halt. After a short break the racing was back underway.
With the French team delighting the home crowd by taking an early lead picking up consistently good points from the sprints. Belgium though came from nowhere, taking a lap and 2 sprints in the process giving themselves 30 points and putting them in the gold medal position.
Amongst all the chaos of the final few laps there was a horrific crash with Great Britain and New Zealand going down very hard. The scoreboard initially gave France the 10 points for the final sprint and with it victory sending the home crowd into a euphoric celebration. However they had seemingly not realised Denmark were up the track and once the scoreboard had been adjusted accordingly there was an audible sigh in the Vélodrome National apart from the Belgian contingent as the were crowned world champions with the French taking silver and Denmark bronze.