Does track cycling have something of a problem?
There is no doubt it has been a tough year at the top level on the boards.
As the likes of Tadej Pogacar, Remco Evenepoel and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot dominate attention on the road, achieving their monumental exploits amid a kaleidoscopic backdrop of achingly beautiful scenery and wall-to-wall coverage, velodromes have, at the highest international level at least, been left eerily silent.
Indeed, to casual observers, the track side of the sport is very much out of sight, out of mind — the only time most will even see a velodrome is on TV coverage of the finale of the Paris-Roubaix one-day classic in April.
This year, the UCI struggled to collate more than a couple of events of elite international track competitions, with just one Nations Cup event — in Konya, Türkiye back in March — to go with this week's World Championships, set to get underway at the Velódromo de Peñalolén in Santiago, Chile this Wednesday (local time).
"It just means that we have to take the racing that we can get," Australian sprinter Alessia McCaig told ABC Sport from Santiago, where she was preparing for this week's world championships.
McCaig is one of the rising stars of Australian track cycling and will compete in the sprint, keirin and team sprint in South America.
These world championships will be the 22-year-old reigning Australian sprint and keirin champion's third major competition of 2025.
"We usually have three Nations Cups in a season, but this year we only had one," McCaig said.
"So there were even fewer competitions for us to compete in … nationals, the Oceania championships and then we were fortunate enough to be able to go to the Nations Cup this year in Türkiye and compete there. So that also was really helpful."
The fact is, though, organising and arranging track cycling meets is hard work — and expensive.
"You need a country that's willing to host a big competition and then, unless you've got UCI points on the line, it's hard for Australia to send a team over to race in Europe, for example, when it costs so much money and it's so far away for us," McCaig explained.
Fortunately for Australia, the upcoming Nations Cup program will provide a more convenient outlet for our track riders.
"The first one's in Perth, the second one's in Hong Kong and the third one's in Malaysia," McCaig said.
"So they're all really close to us, which is really beneficial for us next year."
Track cycling left out in the cold ahead of Chile championships
Australia has sent an 18-strong team to South America with an eye on building upon recent performances and improve on the two medals — silver and bronze in the men's and women's team sprint respectively — won in Ballerup, Denmark, last year.
They may look to the Para-Cycling team, who topped the medal table with a whopping 25 medals, including 16 golds, at their recent championships in Rio, claiming six world records as well.
But while sprinters have provided medals throughout Australian track cycling history, a key focus will, as ever, be the team pursuit.
The squad is boosted by the return of Olympic champion Conor Leahy, making a return to the team pursuit for the first time since that golden evening in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines just outside Paris.
"The first couple of months of the year were just all on the road with the ProVelo [Super League]," Leahy, who rode for domestic team CCACHExBODYWRAP in the inaugural series, told ABC Sport before flying out to Chile.
"Racing against Australia's up-and-coming and already established domestic road riders — [it] was really good to try that out a bit more.
"I thought it gave me a bit of a break from track, which was good and sort of refreshed myself.
"But it's also made the fire come back in the belly a little bit, which has been really exciting."
That break was something of a necessity due to the lack of track events, the number of which has dramatically dropped off.
"In terms of big events like your Nations Cups or World Cups … a couple of years ago there were six per year," Leahy said.
"So it went from six-a-year to three-a-year and then there was only one this year … but it looks like they've got a plan in place for the next few years, so they should be back to three, which would be good.
"But there's racing all over the world every weekend basically, just not as big.
"I've done a few track races overseas this year, a few omniums and a few points races, Hong Kong was a Class 2 race and then I also did one in Japan, a Class 1 — that was a good experience.
"That's why all the Europeans find it so much easier getting UCI points compared to us, they're racing constantly throughout the year.
"One of those things is it is a bit tough being from Australia and the mass start races. Probably our biggest challenge is just actually getting an opportunity to do it."
Despite the continued rise of New Zealand track riders — the Kiwis won four medals at the last world championships with two golds and two bronzes, and won five total medals at the 2024 Olympics at the Vélodrome National — Leahy points out that there is just not quite the number of riders in Australia's immediate vicinity to have a full program of events like that.
"You probably have to go and spend a season or two in Europe racing on the track, not just on the road," Leahy said.
"A lot of Australians go over to Europe but they just focus on the road, whereas if they want to make some big shifts in the mass start racing, we'd have to do the track racing as well.
"I think what it takes is just a bit of buy-in and a bit of commitment as well."
Diversifying the track for Leahy
Moving onto the road is a tried and tested path for team pursuit riders.
Fellow gold medallist from Paris Sam Welsford spent his second year with World Tour team Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe in 2025, winning three stages and the points jersey at the Tour Down Under.
Italy's 2021 Olympic gold medal winning team contained Filippo Ganna and Jonathan Milan, both hugely successful riders on the road with 15 stage wins at grand tours between them.
Meanwhile two-time Olympic gold medallists Bradley Wiggins and Geraint Thomas have both gone on to win Tours de France on the road.
But Leahy is not looking to the road for anything other than variety, remaining focused on the track with a view to riding some of the mass-start events in LA in 2028.
"It's a bit different than the team pursuing, it's obviously a lot longer, a lot more people, a lot more tactics involved," Leahy said of track mass start events such as the points, madison, scratch and elimination races.
"It's definitely a goal of mine moving into the next Olympics, I would love to be able to have the opportunity to do some of the mass start racing at the Olympics. [It was] a bit of a starting stone on my journey towards that, really.
"I got the opportunity [to do the points race in Chile] based off those competitions that I did in Asia, I raced pretty well … so, yeah, I'm super excited for that, obviously."
Regardless of those ambitions, the attention will mostly be focused on the team pursuit, the event that remains the greatest single indicator of a nation's supremacy on the track, the perfect harmonisation between machine, athlete and technology.
Australia is the world record holder in the event but has made changes to the squad that beat out Great Britain in Paris — gone are Kelland O'Brien and Sam Welsford, with Blake Agnoletto and James Moriarty joining Oliver Bleddyn and Leahy in the four.
"The team pursuit, I think for us in Australia, always sort of takes the cake as the thing that we focus most on. It's just really deeply rooted in the culture of Australian track cycling, I think," Leahy said.
"So that's obviously the main goal. But then, really expanding my skill set and experience and the points race is something I'm super looking forward to as well."
Leahy said that setting the world record in Paris was a "perfect storm", with everything coming together at just the right time for the perfect, golden ride.
But success in Paris does not immediately mean the team are favourites to claim gold for the first time at a world championships since 2019.
"I don't think it adds pressure or expectation," Leahy said, noting the Velódromo de Peñalolén track has very different dimensions to what most nations are used to, with much less angle on the banking, which could catch some teams out," Leahy said.
"We know that it's a different team and we know that we can't be going into thinking like Olympic champion world record holders because the reality is, this team isn't the same. Some of the members are, but we've still just got to go back to that process and just the way we tackle races.
"We can't be going in thinking that we're going to win. We've got to just go back and focus on the process and ride a good race as a team and not let that outside noise of being Olympic champions, world record holders, this and that because it's just a different team at the end of the day."
Sprinters eye date with Team GB
McCaig is defending the superb bronze medal she won at last year's championships in the Netherlands in the team sprint with Molly McGill and Kristina Clonan.
Clonan is out of action this year with a back injury, prompting a reshuffle in the Australian line-up, which McCaig said showed just how much depth Australian sprinting had.
"I'm still in third position. But Molly, our starter from last year, has gone to second wheel and then we have two girls [Liliya Tatarinoff and Kristine Perkins] swapping in first wheel," McCaig said.
"It's really great to have a team of four here for the girls — and there were a few other options that we could have chosen from back in Australia as well.
"I think the depth in the women's field has really come a long way, and that's really, really positive, and I'm really excited to see what we can do as a team."
As is the case with the entire Australian squad, the sprint team is hampered somewhat by geography — McCaig and McGill are based in Brisbane while Tatarinoff and Perkins are in Perth.
It means the entire line has only had a handful of sessions together, but McCaig did not think that would hamper them too much.
"I think we can pull it together on the day and really do something special," she said.
For McCaig, the looming threat remains the powerhouse Great Britain squad.
British sprint cycling is always powerful — and has got even more so in the past year with the acquisition of former Australian Matthew Richardson, who broke the flying 200m world record earlier this year, averaging 80.5km/h to go through the 200m in just 8.941 seconds, making him among the favourites for all the sprint events in Chile.
Richardson's move will have ignited the sporting feud that so often simmers between the two nations on the men's side of competition, but it is a similar story with the women's line-up, with Richardson's partner Emma Finucane leading Britain's charge.
Finucane has won the last two world titles in the sprint and claimed bronze in the event in Paris, one of three medals the 22-year-old Welshwoman won on the track.
Beating them was an ominous yet intriguing prospect for McCaig.
"Look, they're a pretty strong team,' McCaig said, somewhat understating the fact," she said.
"They have a lot of depth in their program. They don't even have the same team that they fielded at the Olympics. Emma's the only person racing who is the same.
"It's going to be really hard for us to beat them this year, but, you know, I think they've just been provided a lot more opportunity than we have [in terms of racing] and I think it's just going to take a bit of time for us to build up our program a bit more.
"Maybe by the time LA rolls around, we'll knock them off their perch.
"But yeah, I mean, it's going to be pretty difficult. They're all incredible athletes."
When does the track world championships start?
The UCI track world championships gets underway at 1:00am (AEDT) Thursday, October 23 and runs through to Monday morning.
You can watch the event on Stan Sport.
Endurance squad:
Elimination: Blake Agnoletto, (sub: Liam Walsh). Individual Pursuit: James Moriarty, Walsh, (sub: Conor Leahy). Madison: Agnoletto and Oliver Bleddyn (sub: Leahy). Omnium: Bleddyn (sub: Walsh). Points: Leahy (sub: Bleddyn). 10km Scratch: Walsh (sub: Leahy). Team Pursuit: Agnoletto, Bleddyn, Leahy, Moriarty (sub: Walsh).
Sprint squad:
Keirin: Daniel Barber, Leigh Hoffman, Tayte Ryan. Sprint: Barber, Ryan Elliot, Hoffman (sub: Ryan). Team Sprint: Barber, Elliot, Hoffman (sub: Ryan). 1km time trial: Ryan.
Endurance squad:
Elimination: Alessia Polites, (sub: Claudia Marcks). Individual Pursuit: Sophie Edwards, Maeve Plouffe. Madison: Alexandra Grace Manly and Polites (sub: Plouffe). Omnium: Plouffe (sub: Manly). Points: Manly (sub: Polites). 10km Scratch: Edwards (sub: Murphy). Team Pursuit: Edwards, Manly, Plouffe, Polites (sub: Marcks).
Sprint squad:
Keirin: Alyssia McCaig, Liliya Tatarinoff (sub: Molly McGill). Sprint: McCaig, McGill (sub: Tatarinoff). Team Sprint: McCaig, McGill, Kristine Perkins (sub: Tatarinoff). 1km time trial: Marcks.
