Flurina Rigling won the C2 kilometre, scratch, match sprint and elimination in Apeldoorn. Devon Briggs qualified for the C3 sprint with a world-record 10.740 flying 200, won the match sprint, kilometre and elimination, then finished second to Fin Graham in the 10 km scratch after trying to close Graham's late attack.
Two riders having exceptional championships would not tell us very much on their own. Rio in 2025 had already produced Tahlia Clayton-Goodie and Claudia Cretti winning every individual title available in their classifications, Korey Boddington taking the C3 sprint, kilometre and elimination, Emily Petricola winning the C3 kilometre, scratch and elimination, and Ricardo Ten Argiles taking three C1 titles alongside sprint silver. Rigling had already won three of her four events there before turning that into a clean sweep in Apeldoorn.
Para cycling has always had riders capable of racing across a broad programme, and the old omnium existed specifically because that breadth was part of the sport. What has become more pronounced since the programme changed in 2025 is the frequency with which one rider can remain at world-title level as the demands move from a timed effort into match sprinting, elimination and a longer bunch race.
Apeldoorn hardly provided an argument for reversing course. The C-class programme produced excellent racing and the tandem racing was excellent throughout as well, with greater depth, strong new combinations and another step forward in performance. There was plenty in the championship to support the move towards more direct racing; the more interesting evidence came from who kept winning it, because once Rio and Apeldoorn are viewed together the same broad rider profile appears repeatedly across events which were supposed to test quite different things.
What Changed in 2025
Until 2024, C-class versatility had a defined place. The omnium combined the flying 200, individual pursuit, time trial and scratch, allowing breadth to be measured as an overall competition while the individual pursuit remained available to the rider whose strongest qualities were sustained power, pacing and position.
For 2025, both the C-class pursuit and omnium were removed. Match sprinting and elimination were introduced, while the kilometre and scratch remained. The UCI referred to more than two years of discussion around long competition days, unpredictable schedules and a desire to reduce the weight of timed events in favour of more head-to-head and bunch racing. Those were real problems in a championship where every classification multiplies the number of qualifying rides, finals and medal ceremonies.
The effect on some riders was equally real. Blaine Hunt described losing the pursuit as "disheartening", while Emily Petricola approached Rio after five consecutive C4 pursuit world titles talking about the strange experience of having to start again and learn a substantially different programme. Her response was remarkable: with no pursuit title left to defend, she won the kilometre, scratch and elimination instead.
Petricola had not suddenly stopped being one of the best pursuit riders in the world, nor had another rider made her specialism obsolete. The event disappeared and she was good enough to carry her wider ability into the races which replaced it.
Rigling and Briggs followed the same change from different starting points. Rigling had already been an omnium champion and had already demonstrated her range across the flying 200, pursuit, time trial and scratch. Briggs already possessed world-record flying-200 speed and a kilometre world title. Neither needed the new programme to make them versatile.
What changed was the return available from that versatility.
Under the previous structure, part of that range contributed towards one omnium classification. Since 2025, the rider capable of carrying speed, acceleration, endurance and racecraft across the programme can convert those qualities into several separate world titles. Rio showed how powerful that could be almost immediately, and Apeldoorn has now repeated the pattern.
The omnium may have disappeared, but the sort of rider it was designed to identify is exceptionally well equipped for the championship which replaced it.
A 200 Metre Time Trial Followed by a 750M Scratch Race
Briggs is particularly useful when looking at the sprint because there is no need to debate whether he has enough outright speed. A 10.740 flying 200 is a world record, and he had already been operating at world-record level before lowering it again in Apeldoorn.
He also brings a background which fits unusually well with the racing that follows qualification. Briggs has spoken about growing up in bunch racing through the age groups, saying that moving into elimination, scratch or match sprint racing presented "no problem", while enjoying the unpredictability and greater bike-handling demands of those events.
The flying 200 remains a straightforward test of speed. Once the tournament begins, C-class sprint rounds can contain two or three riders over 750 metres, and three-up racing creates a different problem from the conventional two-rider match sprint.
With two riders, much of the race can be built around managing one opponent: who leads, who follows, who can be made to commit and where the decisive acceleration begins. Add a third rider and there is another wheel, another possible attack and another rider who may be left to close a move. Controlling one opponent no longer means controlling the race.
At its most open, it can look remarkably like a 750 metre scratch race seeded by a 200 metre time trial.
That is part of what makes it so good to watch, but it also changes the balance between the riders. A dedicated sprinter who has produced the fastest qualifying time can suddenly find that some of the advantage created by superior maximum speed is being diluted by traffic, positioning and the presence of a third rider, while somebody with strong bunch-racing instincts has more tactical ways to remain in the contest.
Briggs is unusually well equipped because he has both. His 200 metre time proves the speed, while his background gives him the racecraft to deal with three riders moving at once. Not every pure sprint or kilometre specialist will have the same combination, and if para track still has enough riders whose preparation is genuinely built around those shorter events, it is reasonable to ask whether the match sprint should give them a cleaner opportunity to express it.
A two-up format would not make the racing less tactical. It would simply bring the contest closer to the familiar relationship between two sprint riders, reducing some of the bunch-racing advantage which comes with the third wheel and giving the faster specialist fewer variables to overcome after qualification.
That is not an argument that the three-up racing failed. It was thrilling in Apeldoorn and some of the uncertainty came directly from having three riders on the track. The question is slightly different: whether the format which produces the most entertaining sprint is necessarily the format which gives the dedicated sprint specialist the fairest chance of becoming world champion.
Briggs' championship makes that worth considering because many of the same qualities which help him in a three-up sprint become valuable again in the elimination and scratch. His flying 200 established the maximum speed, the kilometre asked him to turn acceleration and anaerobic capacity into a longer effort, and the elimination repeatedly returned him to positioning and acceleration under fatigue. By the closing laps of the 10 km scratch he was still capable of responding when Graham went clear, chasing alone and almost bringing the race back.
The breadth becomes easier to appreciate by briefly moving outside para cycling. Asking Harrie Lavreysen or Emma Finucane to prepare for the sprint, kilometre, scratch and elimination at the same World Championships would look extraordinary, just as asking Lotte Kopecky or Iuri Leitao to begin with a flying 200 and match-sprint tournament before moving into the bunch programme would be an unusual use of either rider.
Para track has no reason to copy that structure, but the comparison shows how wide the C-class range has become. Elsewhere those demands have become sufficiently distinct to create separate athlete groups; here the same athlete can still move between them and, increasingly, win in all of them.
The Specialist Has Fewer Places to Go
The kilometre still leaves room for a rider whose value is concentrated heavily in one event. Jody Cundy spent two decades demonstrating how far that specialism could be taken, and Korey Boddington finally ending his run of world titles in Apeldoorn did nothing to erase a C4 world record which has stood since 2014.
The pursuit rider has no equivalent route in the current C-class World Championship programme.
Petricola's five consecutive titles make that particularly stark because her response to losing the event was so successful. She broadened her championship and won three different races, but requiring one of the outstanding pursuiters of her generation to become something else remains part of the story rather than evidence that nothing was lost.
The tandem programme provided a useful contrast in Apeldoorn without needing any one result to make the point. Sprint, kilometre and pursuit remain recognisably different challenges, the standard across them continues to rise, partnerships are becoming increasingly refined and more nations are capable of producing competitive combinations. None of that racing appeared to suffer because specialist events remained part of the programme.
The original problem for the C classes was largely practical. Adding match sprinting and elimination without removing anything would have made an already difficult World Championship longer, and the number of C classifications means every additional individual discipline carries a substantial scheduling cost.
Once something had to be removed, however, the decision inevitably changed which forms of excellence retained a world-title opportunity.
The old programme made its all-round competition obvious. Riders raced an omnium, while the pursuit and other individual disciplines remained available to specialists. The current programme has no formal C-class omnium, yet its first two seasons have repeatedly produced championships in which the broadest riders collect titles across several events.
There is an important distinction here. Specialists can still win, but the versatile rider now has more independent routes to turn broadly transferable qualities into medals, while some of the narrowest specialist routes have disappeared altogether.
After Rio and Apeldoorn, that is difficult to treat as an incidental consequence of the changes. It has become one of the defining competitive characteristics of the programme.
What LA28 Will Reward
Los Angeles takes that structure further. The current Paralympic programme gives C riders kilometre time trials, scratch races, elimination races and the mixed C1-5 team sprint. There is no individual C pursuit and, despite match sprinting now being part of the World Championships, no individual C sprint. Tandem riders retain pursuit and sprint.
For a national programme working with a limited number of athlete places, range therefore has value before competition begins. One rider capable of challenging in the kilometre, progressing deep into an elimination, racing for a scratch medal and contributing to the team sprint creates several possible returns from one selection.
A specialist can still make the stronger case where the probability of winning one event outweighs everything offered elsewhere, but the calculation is no longer neutral. The programme itself gives the broader rider more ways to justify a place and more ways to turn that place into a medal.
That does not make the direction wrong. Apeldoorn provided a strong argument for much of what changed in 2025 because the resulting World Championships had genuine range without losing the performances against the clock which remain part of para track's identity. Match sprinting and elimination have added worthwhile racing, while the tandem programme continues to show how compelling the more traditional specialist events can become as their performance level rises.
The argument is therefore not for replacing one programme with the other. It is about the balance between them.
Rigling won four individual titles in Apeldoorn. Briggs moved from a world-record flying 200 to three world titles and a silver in the scratch. Petricola lost the discipline in which she had won five consecutive world championships and responded by winning three different ones. Rio had already produced similar sweeps across several classifications.
Those results do not diminish any of the riders involved. They show how well the best have adapted to the programme in front of them, while also showing something stronger after two seasons: versatility is no longer simply one useful quality among several in C-class para track, because the structure of the championship gives it a competitive advantage.
Apeldoorn showed how good the racing produced by that structure can be. The question left for the sport is not whether the 2025 changes worked, because in many respects they plainly have, but whether para track ultimately wants quite so much of its World Championship and Paralympic programme to favour the rider capable of doing everything over the rider capable of doing one thing exceptionally well.