Canada golden at Para cycling road world championships

Canada’s Para cycling stars are coming home with seven medals from the UCI Para Cycling Road World Championships, with four finishes atop the podium, two silvers, and one bronze. 

Shelley Gautier (Toronto) continued her dominant winning ways, clinching the 13th and 14th world championship titles of her career in Maniago, Italy. She won both the time trial and individual time trial events. 

Since her T1 category was added to the world championships in 2010, Gautier is undefeated. 

“It was a really enjoyable experience today,” said Gautier in a Cycling Canada press release after winning the time trial. “It made me feel all the hard work I’ve done was really worth it. Winning for Canada made me happy and it made my team happy.”

Tristen Chernove (Cranbrook, BC) also captured a rainbow jersey and gold medal in the men’s C2 road race category, defending his world title from a year ago. He added this to a silver medal won in the time trial race earlier in the event. 

Michael Sametz (Calgary) was also able to keep his title of world champion, winning the men’s C3 individual time trial event for a second consecutive year. 

Other Canadian medals were won by Ross Wilson (Edmonton) and Alex Hyndman (Morpeth, Ont.). 

Wilson earned a silver medal in the men’s C1 individual time trial while Hyndman was Canada’s first medallist of the world championships with a bronze in the men’s H3 individual time trial.  

Canada concluded the 2018 world championships ranked fifth overall by world titles. 

“The international level in Para-cycling is constantly rising,” said Sebastien Travers, Head Para Coach at Cycling Canada in a press release. “I’m glad to see we can keep up. Our athletes have achieved key performances which have led to high results both in terms of medals and qualification points. It’s above expectations for the level we are currently at. 

“We come out of this world championships very satisfied with where we are two years from the [Tokyo 2020] Games. Besides the medals, we’re having top-5 and top-8 performances from our newcomers, which shows that our NextGen coaches are doing a great job.”