Life after Richardson as Aussies win world track silver

Australia's men's sprint cyclists have started life without their track defector Matthew Richardson by winning a world championship team silver medal in Denmark.

On a successful opening night of the championships for the Australian team in Ballerup on Wednesday, the women's trio also took bronze in their team event.

Even without individual triple Olympic medallist Richardson, who caused a post-Paris sensation by announcing he'd be leaving the Australia team to compete for Great Britain, a new-look trio achieved a better result than the team bronze won at the Games.

Debutant Ryan Elliott teamed up with Leigh Hoffman and Paris medallist Thomas Cornish to finish second behind the all-conquering Dutch Olympic-winning trio.

Though the results were not in the same league as on the super slick Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines track used in Paris, the Dutch team featuring the great Harrie Lavreysen, Jeffrey Hoogland and Roy van den Berg won as they pleased in 42.046 seconds.

In the gold medal race, the Aussie trio were quickest over the first lap but eventually got blown away as they came home in 42.673, matching the silver they won at last year's championships.

It was sprint 'GOAT' Lavreysen's 14th world gold medal to go with his five Olympic crowns.

Japan took bronze, beating a new-look British trio into fourth.

England-born Richardson, a five-time world championship medallist who won individual sprint silver among his three Olympic medals in Paris, has pledged himself to competing for the country of his birth amid much controversy.

But under the international governing body (UCI) rules over the nationality swap process, the 25-year-old is not yet eligible to compete for Britain in Denmark or at the 2025 European championships.

In the women's race, Australia put out a team for the first time since 2020 and were rewarded as Olympian Kristina Clonan joined first-time world championship riders Alessia McCaig and Molly McGill to win their bronze-medal race against Germany (47.358 to 48.188).

It's a significant milestone for the Australian track program, given women's sprinting has declined since the retirements of Olympic champion Anna Meares, Steph Morton and Kaarle McCulloch.

Australia also did not enter the women's team sprint at the last two Olympics. Clonan was the sole Australian rider in the sprint and keirin at Paris.

McCaig said they had only trained together for three weeks before the worlds. She and McGill are making their senior worlds debuts.

"We didn't expect this ... this opportunity has definitely been a long time coming, but the medal is just a bonus and makes that wait and hard work really worth it," she said.

"I hope this is just the start of the opportunities for myself, and the women's team sprint group."

The British women took gold in the race-off with the Netherlands, while Dutch road star Lorena Wiebes took the Scratch race for her first elite rainbow jersey on the track.