4 hours ago
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2025 World Track Cycling Championships
Date: 22-26 October Venue: Santiago, Chile
Coverage: Watch coverage across BBC TV, the Red Button, BBC iPlayer & BBC Sport website & app.
Matt Richardson didn't swap Australia for Manchester for the weather, nor the lifestyle and certainly not for the traffic.
Instead, he did it solely for the "magic" of British Cycling.
"A way I can probably describe it is the Australian programme is like high school and the British programme is like Hogwarts," he says.
Little more than a year ago, the 26-year-old track cyclist - a three-time Olympic medallist at last year's Games - sent shockwaves through the sport when he announced he was changing allegiance from Australia to Great Britain, the country of his birth.
The transition was tough at the start, landing on British soil at the start of 2025 when the weather was getting "colder, greyer and darker", but the sprinter quickly found his home at British Cycling's high-tech HQ.
"It's incredible with all this magic going on. It's a crazy place to be. I remember my first couple of weeks there and being like 'wow'," he tells BBC Sport.
"People talk about no stones unturned and that's the definition of this place. I feel so fortunate to [have experienced] two completely different programmes, and I think having that is a real strength, applying two different mindsets or philosophies to try to find the fastest way to do things."
It's a case of so far, so good for Richardson since the swap. In August he made history as the first cyclist to go under the nine-second barrier in the flying 200m, setting a new world record of 8.941 seconds in Konya, Turkey, before lowering that mark to 8.857 the next day.
He is matter of fact about his achievement.
"It was a just a simple day," he says. "I rocked up to the velodrome, did a warm-up, did a little bit of an activation and then rode faster than anybody else in history and that was basically it."
Next up for Richardson and the rest of a 22-strong British squad is the World Championships in Santiago, Chile, from Wednesday.
He has five world medals to his name but, as is the case at the Olympics, he has never won an individual gold at that level. Dutchman Harrie Lavreysen - a five-time Olympic champion and 16-time world champion - has always beaten him to the line.
Asked if the switch to GB will aid him closing the gap on his "biggest rival", Richardson said: "I think so.
"Based on my training times in the last year, I haven't got any slower. I have had everything at my fingertips to make me the best athlete I possibly can be.
"Has it made me a better cyclist? Yes. Has it given me a slight edge to where I was a year on? Yes.
"Whether that results in me beating Harrie, I don't know.
"I always go to win everything I compete in. I don't put this much effort in in training to come second.
"I do come second quite a lot, but it's not my main ambition. My ambition is to win absolutely everything."
Joining Richardson in Chile is team-mate and girlfriend Emma Finucane, who in Paris became the first British woman since 1964 to win three medals at the same Olympics.
The first of those was the women's team sprint gold alongside Katy Marchant and Sophie Capewell, Britain's first in the event.
After the Games and last year's Worlds, where she defended her individual sprint title and won team sprint gold, she flew to Perth, Australia, with Richardson for two months for a "complete switch-off".
She swapped her bike for a surfboard and "felt so present", but by the time she came home she found herself missing cycling and was "ready to go again".
Finucane will ride all three sprint events this week and is confident she can retain her individual rainbow jersey. The chaotic keirin is the only sprint event she has yet to win a major gold in, a target she maintains going into Santiago.
In the team sprint, things are more uncertain. Marchant has recently had her second child, while Capewell has chosen not to compete this year.
It means Finucane, at 22, will be the most experienced head on the team, riding alongside championship debutants Rhianna Parris-Smith and Iona Moir.
"Getting used to a new team is a new challenge," Finucane says. We get on well. The dynamic is different, but that's what's exciting, that we have that depth.
"There are about eight girls on the programme now, whereas a few years ago it was just Katy. That internal competition is how we won the Olympics.
"We have girls that can step up to a world-class level and will slot in. Just because Katy and Sophie are gone doesn't mean the team is any less good."
