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Women’s team pursuit bronze for Canada on final day of Cali World Cup

Barrette earns sixth in the sprint

The Canadian women’s team pursuit squad took bronze on Sunday’s final day of competition at the Cali, Colombia track World Cup, giving it five medals in the last seven World Cups in which it has participated. The Canadians have also won medals in the last six World Championships and the last two Olympics.

The day started with the men’s sprint qualifying. In this round Barrette placed eighth with a flying 200-metre time of 9.952. This matched him up with Gazprom’s Nikita Shurshin, who the Canadian beat by the narrowest margin of the 1/16 finals: 0.009 seconds. The next obstacle was Australian Thomas Clarke, who Barrette clipped by 0.026 seconds.

It was time for the quarterfinals where Russian Pavel Yakushevskiy ended Barrette’s run, winning in two straight races. Nevertheless, Barrette was ranked sixth in the event. It was a satisfying return to the velodrome where Barrette suffered a terrible crash in the autumn of 2015.

The women’s team pursuit gang was in the first round against Australia, and although the Canadians were faster than the Aussies in Saturday’s qualifying round, the team from Down Under prevailed and would go on to take the gold. Still, Canada was matched up with France in the bronze medal race.


After 1000-metres Canada was over a second faster, and nearly two seconds faster after 2-km. By the finish Stephanie Roorda, Ariane Bonhomme, Laura Brown and Kinley Gibson had more than seven seconds over the French.

Kate O’Brien finished just out of automatic qualification for the second round of the women’s keirin, but made it in via the repechage. There, she couldn’t quite earn the medal race, but placed eighth all around in the 7-12 contest.

2016 junior world kilo champion and world record holder Stefan Ritter represented Canada in the 1-km time trial. His first round time of 1:02.145 was good for 7th out of 15 athletes and a place in the final. Ritter was 8th in his first World Cup kilo after 9th in Friday’s team sprint competition.

Canada’s final competitor in Cali was Bonhomme, this time in the points race. She had a good start, earning two points on the first of eight sprints. That was all she could muster and she finished 15th out of 21 athletes in her first World Cup points race.

The fourth and last World Cup of the 2016-2017 season is next week in Los Angeles.