With seven world championships and four Olympic medals among her palmares, Sarah Hammer has easily established herself as America's most decorated track athlete. But the 33-year-old has glimpsed the future and seen that her days at the top are numbered, and she's got a pretty good idea which rider will knock her from her perch. In fact, she's rooming with her this week in Hong Kong at the UCI Track World Championships, which start Wednesday and continue through Sunday.
20-year-old Chloe Dygert, Hammer's ongoing apprentice and roommate this week in Hong Kong, will take another step in her track racing development when she competes for the first time for a rainbow jersey in the 3km individual pursuit, the event Hammer has won five times and for which she currently holds the world record of 3:22.269.
Dygert, who won her first elite rainbow jersey at last year's World Championships in the team pursuit, picked up the 3km individual pursuit this year at the Los Angeles World Cup finals, where she took the gold medal with a time of 3:28.431, beating Hammer's track record by three seconds in just her third-ever attempt at the event.
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While Hammer focuses on Hong Kong's mass-start events – the omnium, scratch race and points race – Dygert will pick up the individual pursuit banner for USA Cycling, hoping to repeat her result in Los Angeles and win her first individual elite championship. Despite her inexperience, she knows bringing home the jersey from Hong Kong will be a much taller order than winning in L.A.
"I've been looking at the times [of] the others girls that I'll be competing with, and it's hard to say," Dygert told Cyclingnews. "Each track is so different, and I'm so new to it that someone who knows what they're talking about is probably saying, 'Oh my gosh, she's stupid,' but my personal belief is that every track is so different, and that each race and each body is so different from day to day, that it's just hard to say.
"It's definitely going to be very competitive and a very strong field, but team pursuit is such a big focus for each team, and so after an Olympic year everyone gets to kind of focus on their individual efforts, so a lot more girls are doing the individual pursuit than last year, so the competition has definitely grown a bit," she said.
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