Worlds on track: Mathilde Gros crowned world champion in individual speed ahead of Lea Sophie Friedrich

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A coronation with the air of a turning point. Mathilde Gros is the new sprint queen. The 23-year-old Frenchwoman triumphed this Friday at Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, winning the individual speed ahead of Lea Sophie Friedrich after a final that she mastered (2-0). Conqueror, tactician, impervious to pressure, the 23-year-old cyclist dazzled the national velodrome before letting her emotion burst, crying in the arms of her family.
This planetary coronation is a glory to which she seemed promised, from her impressive debut in cycling. But also a glory that had moved away from her, according to a difficult period, symbolized by the failed Tokyo Olympics. Gros assured us that she had found herself – well helped by the arrival as coach of the blue sprint of Grégory Baugé – before these Worlds at home. She proved it in a superb way.

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Gros offers the defending champion and goes to the final: the decisive round in video

Hinze then Friedrich went there

From the qualifying phase, Mathilde Gros had marked her territory, signing the second time on 200 meters flying start. Only Friedrich had done better. To rub shoulders with her in the final, the Frenchwoman had to defeat another German: Emma Hinze, defending champion (fallen, this time in bronze). The same one that she had defied with her gaze this summer in Munich, on the road to this rebirth… before losing the continental title at the photo-finish. A click, then.

The complete click, magnificent, was therefore for this Friday. This time, Gros did more than reassure about his body language and his overflowing desire. She lost the first duel against Hinze, but won the next two, already exploding with joy. The simple fact of measuring oneself against the two references of speed, coming from Germany, was a reason for satisfaction assumed during the last European Championships. Less than two years from the Games, she knew how to put them in her mirrors.

Mathilde Gros, 23, thus holds her first major title on a world scale. She succeeds Félicia Ballanger, as a Frenchwoman who won the planetary trophy in individual speed. Twenty-three years since France had not known this. It is a page in the history of tricolor track cycling that the 2019 European keirin champion has written. But above all an important page in its history, a few months from Paris 2024, a goal it already has in mind.

Gros shaken by tears after her world championship title

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