A world record is just the beginning for Kelsey Mitchell
After becoming Canadian champion in the sprint, team sprint and time trial, Kelsey Mitchell was back to training on the boards where she took her wins. The rider, who’s from Sherwood Park, Alta., just east of Edmonton, has been calling Milton, Ont., home since August 2018. Her commute to that city’s velodrome is an eight-minute bike ride or a five-minute car ride.
“I needed to learn how to ride a bike and to ride the track,” she said of her condition in mid-2018. After Mitchell participated in a talent-identification event, Cycling Canada knew she could put out a lot of power, about 1,300 W. But the 26-year-old athlete had focused on soccer and hadn’t owned a bike since she was a child. Mitchell found her progression on the track slow as it took her almost two years to learn to spin the cranks properly, push and pull on the bars and pedals properly and corner well on the banks.
She said her reaction when she first looked down on the Milton velodrome’s banked corners was “how the heck do people stay on this thing?” Once she was on the track, it wasn’t so bad.
In early September, Mitchell set the world record in the 200-m sprint, with a time of 10.154 seconds in a qualification round at the Pan Am track cycling championships in Cochabamba, Bolivia. While she feels it’s exciting to hold that record, she was actually more pleased with her consistent finishes in the sprint, which led to a gold-medal win in that competition. Next, she’s focused on improving her abilities so she can win at lower altitudes, like in Milton. In January, Mitchell plans to compete in the Milton stop of track cycling World Cup for the first time. “I’m so excited for that,” she said. Even though she’s raced the Hong Kong World Cup, she’s only been a spectator at home. “So many people were here. It was sweet to see the velodrome packed like that.”— MP