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Cycling: Kenny suffers big crash in omnium at worlds

2020 UCI Track Cycling World Championships

By Martyn Herman

BERLIN (Reuters) - Britain's two-time Olympic omnium champion Laura Kenny suffered another injury scare as she crashed heavily in the first round of the event at the world championships in Berlin on Friday.

Kenny, racing just weeks after breaking her shoulder at a World Cup event in Canada, went down heavily just before the start of the 30th and final lap of the scratch race.

Four other riders also crashed in the incident that judges said was caused by Dutch reigning champion Kirsten Wild.

The good news for the 27-year-old Kenny was that she did not appear to be holding her right shoulder and she was able to walk from the track after being checked by British team doctors.

She suffered a nasty gash next to her right eye though although team officials confirmed she had passed a check for concussion and would carry on in the competition despite almost certainly being out of medal contention.

The second part of the four-discipline omnium is the tempo race before the elimination race and points race later.

Kenny is Britain's most successful female Olympian with four gold medals in total from the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, the other two coming in team pursuit in which she rode on Thursday when Britain took the silver medal.

The scratch race was won by Japan's Yumi Kajihara with Jennifer Valente of the U.S. second and France's Clara Copponi third. Wild was relegated from second place to 19th.

Mexico's Lizbeth Yareli Salazar Vazquez, who appeared to cycle over the grounded Kenny's legs before flying off her bike, was carried off on a stretcher.

Canada's Allison Beveridge also failed to finish, along with Rinata Sultanova of Kazakhstan and Taiwan's Huang Ting Ying.

(Reporting by Martyn Herman; Editing by Toby Davis)