Cycling: Track cycling European Championship: Welte wins first gold medal

Miriam Welte (Kaiserslautern) has won the first gold medal for the Bund Deutscher Radfahrer (BDR) at the European Railway Championship in Berlin in the 500m time trial. The 2012 Olympic team sprint Olympic champion of 2012 won in a 33.321-second time ahead of Pauline Grabosch (Erfurt/33.559) and the Russian defending champion Daria Schmelewa (33.757).

“I’ve only won the U23 European Championship title so far. That’s why I’m incredibly happy,”said Welte, who jumped into the air with joy after the decision. In the team sprint, the 30-year-old had to make do with Kristina Vogel on Thursday with silver.

For Welte and 19-year-old Grabosch, it was the second precious metal within 24 hours:”I see the result as a double victory and am therefore all the more pleased for Miriam,”said Grabosch. This means that the BDR has already reached the previously awarded goal of “four to seven medals” (sport director Patrick Moster) at the half-way stage of the title matches.

Local hero Maximilian Levy missed the semi-final in the sprint. The three-time team sprint world champion lost in two rounds against Frenchman Sebastien Vigier in the quarter-finals.

“I’m driving against someone two and a half tenths of a second faster. This is not one world, these are two worlds,”Levy said. Eric Engler (Cottbus) dropped out of the round of the best 16 against Kamil Kuczynski from Poland.

The European Championship on the newly installed wooden oval at Landsberger Allee ends on Sunday.