Stephanie Roorda wins Canada's 2nd medal at cycling worlds

Stephanie Roorda won Canada's second medal of the 2016 Track World Championships on Thursday in London, England by attacking the field in the last 500 metres of the women's scratch race to finish third.   

Canada sits fifth in the standings with two bronze medals after two days of competition.

Roorda launched her decisive move with less then two laps to go in the 40 lap race, catching a breakaway group with half a lap left and still leading with 100 metres to go.  However, Laura Trott (Great Britain) came up fast from behind with Kirsten Wild (Netherlands), and the pair caught Roorda on the final straight to take gold and silver.

This was Roorda's first individual medal at a world championships.

"It feels great," said Roorda.  "I think it's a testament to the work we do on the Team Pursuit.  We're really fit and it proves we can perform in other events as well, so I'm really, really happy."

In other Canadian action, the women's team pursuit squad of Allison Beveridge, Jasmin Glaesser, Kirsti Lay and Georgia Simmerling, finished second in the qualifying round, with a time of 4:20.664. The United States were the top qualifiers. Canada will face New Zealand in the next round on Friday, with the winner going on to the gold medal final.

"I'm optimistic for our team," said Simmerling. "Today was not our best ride, but we can make some small changes and go a lot faster. It was a crazy day out there but we're sitting in a good position. We can execute."

Canada also had two entrants in the women's keirin - Kate O'Brien and Monique Sullivan.  Both raced aggressively in the opening rounds, but did not make it past the repechage round.

"Anything can happen in the Keirin," said Sullivan.  "It was pretty exciting to have two of us in the race today; that's never happened before. 

"It was actually Katie's first real international Keirin at the world championships, so it's a pretty big step for us.  We've been focussed on getting that Team Sprint spot [for Rio], so that was the real mission for the season, and we were both feeling the effects of that here."