Everything is going smoothly for Kristina Vogel this winter. Even in the World Cup season, the team sprint Olympic champion and reigning world champion was the rider to beat in the sprint. In Cali she lived up to her role as a favorite and for the first time in her career also secured the world title in the sprint. The 23-year-old from Erfurt clearly won the final after two race wins against the Chinese Tianshi Zhong. Third place went to her compatriot Junhong Lin, who prevailed against Jessica Varnish from Britain in the small final. Miriam Welte, Vogel's team sprint partner and world champion over 500 meters, was tenth.
Stephanie Pohl also continued the track record for women. With a clever driving style, the Cottbus native secured a lap win and in the end only had to admit defeat to Amy Cure. The Australian narrowly prevented Pohl's big surprise. In the end they were only separated by three points. So Cure got 38 points, the woman from Cottbus 35. The Canadian Jasmin Glaesser secured the bronze place with 32 points.
The third title decision of the day was in the men's omnium. Here the 20-year-old Frenchman Thomas Boudat won the title. In the final ranking of the competition, which encompassed several disciplines, he was ahead of Tim Veldt from the Netherlands and Viktor Manakov from Russia. German starters were not at the start.
Day four was also the start of the title defense mission for the double world champion from Minsk, Stefan Bötticher. And he tackled this brilliantly. In qualifying over the 200 meters he secured second place with a time of 9,790 seconds behind Frenchman Francois Pervis, who needed 9,742 seconds. Third place in qualifying went to Robert Förstemann with 9,852 seconds. The third German starter, Max Niederlag, finished fifth under 10 seconds.
However, both did not make it into the semi-finals afterwards. Förstemann was eliminated in the round of XNUMX by the British Jason Kenny. Defeat had to admit defeat to the Russian Denis Dmitriev in the quarterfinals. He now meets Pervis in the semi-finals, while Bötticher has to compete with the Australian Matthew Glaetzer in the second semi-final.