Australia's track cycling team have ended a fairly barren world championships in Shanghai with the silver lining of another impressive sprint breakthrough for their marquee rider, Leigh Hoffman.
The 26-year-old Commonwealth champion, who'd begun the Chinese event by helping the men's sprint trio to team silver, ended it on Sunday with another second-place finish in the individual sprint, beaten only by the great, and seemingly inevitable, 'flying Dutchman' Harrie Lavreysen.
There were mixed feelings for the Adelaide speedster, who acknowledged: "To come away with a silver is still pretty amazing, but it is bittersweet to be so close to getting a world title and having it slip away."
In reality, Hoffman could have done little more than to run the amazing Lavreysen as close as he did, losing their gold-medal final in two-straight races as the Dutchman celebrated an eighth successive title and an astonishing 23rd world championship gold in all.
That is not to mention the Netherlands great's five Olympic titles, with Hoffman having to admit: "Lavreysen's won 23 world titles so he's got a ton of experience whereas for myself, that's my first gold-silver race at a world champs."
And while no rider has been able to better Lavreysen in a world championship individual sprint since another Australian star Matthew Glaetzer eight years ago, Commonwealth champ Hoffman has now positioned himself as the man most likely to challenge him at the Los Angeles Olympics.
The Whyalla-born Hoffman had laid down his marker as the fastest qualifier in 9.285 seconds for his flying 200m on Saturday but, as so often, Lavreysen raised his game for the final.
He pounced when the Aussie drifted slightly off the racing line in the first duel of their final and then simply had too much power in race two as he led out commandingly from the front.
Yet it felt like another significant day for Hoffman, who was building on the global silver he won in Santiago, Chile, last year in the keirin.
He ended up as the star of the Australian show with his men's team sprint silver, alongside Ryan Elliott and Danny Barber, and his individual silver being the only medals the team picked up over the week at the Shanghai Velodrome.
That left them a distant 12th in a medal table headed by Great Britain with six golds and compared unfavourably to the five medals they won at the championships in Chile last year .
There still hasn't been an Australian gold at the track worlds now for four years since Hoffman was part of the sprint trio that beat the Lavreysen-led Dutch in Paris in 2022.
