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The star Tournant wins third gold at world championships
Updated: Saturday September 29, 2001 11:56 AM ANTWERP, Belgium (AP) -- Arnaud Tournant won his third gold medal at the world track cycling championships Saturday, leading a French triple in the individual sprint ahead of Laurent Gane and Florian Rousseau. Swiss Bruno Risi took his fourth points title, dominating the 40-kilometer race from start to finish and easily beating Juan Esteban Curuchet of Argentina and Austria's Franz Stocher. Mexico's Nancy Contreras Reyes upset the favorites to win the 500 meter time-trial ahead of Canada's Lori-Ann Muenzer. Germany's Katrin Meinke took bronze. Gane won the first heat in the sprint final with a jump on the final bend, but Tournant struck back with a display of awesome power to coast to victory in the second heat. In the decider, Gane took the early lead but Tournant surprised him with two laps to go, creating a decisive gap which his teammate could never close. It was Tournant's 10th world title, and at 23, it sets him up to become one of the greatest track cyclists of all time. Tournant had already won the 1 kilometer time trial and teamed up with Gane and Rousseau to take gold in the team Olympic sprint. Rousseau beat Germany's Jens Fiedler 2-0 to take bronze. In the men's points race, Risi piled on the points early on and made sure he controlled the race from then on. His only difficult moment came when France's Robert Sassone threatened to take a lap on the Swiss with two dozen laps to go. But Risi took charge of the pursuit himself and ended the challenge with a dozen laps to go. Risi finished the 40 kilometers in 48:22 minutes. Contreras Reyes was the only cyclist to dip under the 35-second mark in the 500 meters time trial with a time of 34.996, holding an edge of .159 seconds of Muenzer. Meinke finished in 35.356. Defending champion Natalia Markovnichenko of Belarus finished just outside the medals, still troubled by sore muscles following a bad crash in the individual sprint early this week. It was the first major title for Contreras Reyes, 23. "It is great to see new countries making an impression," said
Hein Verbruggen, the head of the UCI international cycling
federation.
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