Emma Hinze looked anxiously at the scoreboard, then threw her arm up in jubilation.
World Cycling Championships 2023 Glasgow: Emma Hinze wins gold in the 500 metre time trial
The sprint queen has impressively continued her hunt for gold at the World Cycling Championships and also raced to the world title in the 500 metre time trial. One day after winning gold in the team sprint, Hinze set the fastest time of 32.820 seconds on the wooden oval in the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome.
Team-mate Lea Sophie Friedrich (33.134) secured bronze behind Australia's Kristina Clonan. There was also a medal for former track cycling pro Robert Förstemann, who finished third in the 1000 metre time trial in the para-competitions with Thomas Ulbricht.
World Cycling Championships 2023 Glasgow: Eighth world title for Emma Hinze
It was Hinze's eighth World Championship title of her career. This puts her on a par with Friedrich and brings her closer to the World Championship record held by Kristina Vogel (11), who has been paralysed since her training accident in 2018.
One year before the Olympics, Hinze is in impressive form. After a weak start, she still managed to win ahead of Clonan with a strong second lap. The Hildesheim-born athlete had already made the difference in the team sprint in second position. And her title hunt in Glasgow is far from over: Two more (gold) chances await in the keirin and the sprint.
Emma Hinze speaks out
Let's hope that the World Championships frenzy is not a bad omen for the Olympic Games in Paris. As triple world champion in Berlin, she travelled to Tokyo in 2021 and had to settle for silver in the team sprint in the end. "When I won in Berlin, I didn't see it as a burden. But I realised how much everyone was looking at me and my performance at the Olympics. And how it felt like my opponents were only racing against me," recalls Hinze. "Experiencing that directly on site was difficult because I had never experienced it before and didn't know how to deal with it."
She seems to have matured in the meantime. She also settled a score from the 2022 World Championships, clearly putting Marie-Divine Kouamé in her place with her best time in qualifying. Last year, the young Frenchwoman had inflicted a painful defeat on her in the 500-metre time trial. Pauline Grabosch (33.296) rounded off the strong German result in fifth place.
German track cycling foursome finishes in seventh place
For the once glorious German foursome, the long wait for a World Championship medal continues after 21 years. Theo Reinhardt, Tobias Buck-Gramcko, Joachim Eilers and Felix Groß finished seventh in the 4000-metre team pursuit in 3:51.282 minutes at the 2023 World Cycling Championships in Glasgow.
In 2002, the German foursome won silver in Copenhagen, their last medal, before the downward trend began. Until then, the team pursuit had been a great success story in German cycling. Five Olympic victories and 16 world championship titles were won by German teams in the past.
Women's track cycling foursome also lagging behind
The women's four, which won gold in Tokyo in 2021, is also unlikely to win a medal. Franziska Brauße, Lisa Klein, Mieke Kröger and Laura Süßemilch only achieved the sixth-best time in qualifying with a time of 4:15.035 minutes. As a result, the next round on Saturday could see them make it into the small final.
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