Meares leads Aussie assault at World Cup

afp.comThu 19 Nov 2009, 11pm

Anna Meares helped Australia to a big opening night at the Track World Cup as the hosts took three gold medals [AAP]

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Anna Meares, Olympic silver medallist, headlined a winning night forAustralia with victory over her Chinese rival Guo Shuang in the women'ssprint on the opening night of the Melbourne Track World Cup round.

Meares beat Guo by two heats to nil in the best-of-three gold medal ride-off in one of three Australian victories on the night.

World champion Cameron Meyer won the men's points race and Australia's Jayco professional squad claimed the team sprint.

Meares beat Guo in an eventful semi-final at Beijing last year, while the Chinese star beat her in the quarter-finals last month at the opening World Cup round in Manchester.

"I'm back in town. I just feel like I belong in this event again," Meares said.

Meyer fought back from a lap down to win the 30km points race.

He was tied on points with Ioannis Tamouridis of Greece at the finish, but Meyer won because he was better-placed in the final sprint.

Daniel Ellis combined with Shane Perkins and Scott Sunderland to claim the men's team sprint for Jayco from Germany and Russia.

In other opening day events, New Zealander Jesse Sergent won the men's four-kilometre individual pursuit from Australian Rohan Dennis and Russian Vitaliy Shchedov.

Britain's Wendy Houvenaghel took out the women's 3000m individual pursuit from New Zealand's world champion Alison Shanks and Lesya Kalitovska of the Ukraine.

Russian Evgeniya Romanyuta won the women's scratch race from Italian Giorgia Bronzini.

Results from the first day:

Men

30km points race
1. Cameron Meyer (AUS) 33 pts
2. Ioannis Tamouridis (GRE) 33 pts
3. Lukasz Bujko (POL) 28 pts

Team sprint
1. Team Jayco (AUS - Daniel Ellis, Shane Perkins, Scott Sunderland) 44.589
2. Germany (Carsten Bergemann, Rene Enders, Tobias Wachter) 44.673
3. Russia (Sergey Borisov, Denis Dmitriev, Sergey Kucherov) 45.206

4km Individual pursuit
1. Jesse Sergent (NZL) 4:23.192
2. Rohan Dennis (AUS) 4:24.374
3. Vitaliy Shchedov (UKR) 4:32.106

Women

3km Individual pursuit
1. Wendy Houvenaghel (GBR) 3:33.771
2. Alison Shanks (NZL) 3:34.133
3. Lesya Kalitovska (UKR) 3:38.047

Scratch
1. Evgeniya Romanyuta (RUS)
2. Giorgia Bronzini (ITA)
3. Theresa Cliff-Ryan (VBR/USA)

Sprint
1. Anna Meares (AUS)
2. Shuang Guo (CHN)
3. Willy Kanis (NED)