Day 1: Australia defend team pursuit title

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The Australian men's team pursuiters waged a come-from-behind victory over the Danish squad in the finals of the UCI Track World Championships in Cali, Colombia on the first day of competition. New Zealand won the bronze over Russia.

Reigning world champions Glenn O'Shea and Alex Edmondson and newcomers Mitchell Mulhern and Miles Scotson qualified second fastest in the morning for Australia, and in the final Luke Davison replaced Scotson to battle Denmark's Casper Von Folsach, Lasse Hansen, Rasmus Quaade and Alex Rasmussen for gold.

Denmark went out well in the final, building up nearly a half second lead at the halfway point, but the Australians rallied back, closing the gap over the next 500m and then surging to the gold medal, besting the Danes with a 3:57.91 over their 3:59.62 finish.

"We knew it was going to be hard and we got driven the whole way to the end by the Danes, they put up such an awesome fight so to come out on top is unbelievable," Edmondson said.

"We knew we had to ride our own race and we knew they were going to come out hard and we went out hard too, but at the end of the day it came down to the last kilometre and we just stuck to our plan, tried not to get rattled and held on."

The gold was O'Shea third after last year's team pursuit win and a title in the omnium, but he had to overcome jetlag and illness to get on the top step of the podium.

"That was pretty good wasn't it? A bit harder than last year I think, today we were a bit disappointed with the heat, we only just snuck into the final so we were pretty motivated," O'Shea said.

"It was a very tight race – only a couple of hundredths of a second separated us the whole way. It was Eddie that brought it home for us. He was the one that pulled the cat out of the bag and won the race for us."

Team Sprint

The New Zealand sprinters had an equally thrilling finale to the men's team sprint, with Ethan Mitchell, Sam Webster and Eddie Dawkins claiming a narrow victory over last year's champions Germany (Rene Enders, Robert Forestermann and Max Levy) by just 0.045 seconds. France pushed Russia off the podium for bronze by an even closer margin of 0.024 seconds.

"It has been a hard few years for us," Mitchell said. "In 2012 we got bronze and we qualified first last year but couldn't capitalise on a good qualification. We've been working hard and it is a new year with a new coach, so to win gold this time means a lot to us.

"It was a very tight race – only a couple of hundredths of a second separated us the whole way. It was Eddie that brought it home for us. He was the one that pulled the cat out of the bag and won the race for us."

The German Olympic gold medalists Kristina Vogel and Miriam Welte continued to post strong results in the women's team sprint, besting China's Junhong Lin and Tianshi Zhong by more than a second to defend their title.

Britain's Jessica Varnish and Rebecca James handed Russia yet another fourth place finish, taking a close victory for bronze.

Vogel was pleased to have kicked off the first day of racing with a rainbow jersey. "I only have one world to say – treble! I'm really proud of what we achieved tonight," she said. Welte was also delighted: "I can't believe we are world champions again."

First gold for Belgium

Kelly Druyts handed Belgium its first track world title since 2012, winning the women's scratch race in a solo escape over Poland's Katarzyna Pawlowska. Evgenia Romanyuta gave Russia it's first medal of the championships with a bronze.

Druyts called the result "a dream come true", saying that she had dreamed about winning a world title. "I won the bronze in 2012, and last year I did not race the track to become stronger on the road. And now this," she said to Sporza.

"I rode all for nothing. I went away with six laps to go with Ireland's [Caroline Ryan] and then went solo for the last three laps. It was the right decision."

Full Results