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- The U.S. women’s team won the team pursuit at the UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Berlin, beating Great Britain in the final.
- This is the that the U.S. women’s track cycling team has won the world title in the team pursuit.
- The women—Chloe Dygert, Jennifer Valente, Lily Williams, and Emma White—dedicated the win to teammate Kelly Catlin, who passed away last year.
The women of the U.S. track cycling team the title of world champions after winning gold in the 4,000-meter team pursuit at the UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Berlin on February 27. This year the team comprised of Chloe Dygert, Jennifer Valente, Lily Williams, and Emma White.
Great Britain finished second in the women’s team pursuit, while Germany came in third place.
Team USA placed seventh in the women’s team pursuit last year after previously in that discipline, winning gold three years in a row from 2016 to ’18.
The women dedicated the win to their former teammate Kelly Catlin, who was a member of those gold medal-winning team pursuit teams. Catlin missed the 2019 Track Cycling World Championships due to side effects from an earlier concussion, and then she died by suicide on March 7, 2019.
Now, nearly a year after Catlin’s passing, the U.S. women are team pursuit world champions once again and now turn their sights to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
“I’m proud of what this team accomplished tonight,” said Gary Sutton, USA Cycling’s head coach of women’s track endurance, in a . “They pulled together and rode really well, like I knew they could. This is the starting point for Tokyo and our plan is to only go up from here.”
At the 2016 Rio Olympics, the U.S. women—Catlin, Valente, Dygert, and Sarah Hammer—won silver in the team pursuit.
