Jonathan Milan is the new world champion in individual pursuit of track cycling. This evening on the Ballerup track in Denmark, the Italian won the final with a new world record of 3’59″153. He beat the British Josh Charlton who in the semi-final had taken away the world record from Filippo Ganna by stopping the timers on 3 ’59″304.
Milan, 24 years old from Tolmezzo, won the first world championship gold of his career at an individual level. On the track of the ‘Super Arena’ of the Danish resort the Italian, Olympic team gold in Tokyo and world championship gold always in the team pursuit and again in 2021 in Roubaix, offered a superlative performance, masterly from a tactical point of view but also of the distribution of forces.
The Lidl-Trek runner was able not only to beat the 21-year-old Charlton but even improve the world record of the 4 kilometer long specialty. In the semi-final the English athlete, stopping the clock at 3’59″304, had taken away the world record from Filippo Ganna which was 3’59″636.
Milan was even stronger and showed off all its power in the final. Jonathan, bronze last year in the race won by Ganna, and silver in 2021 and 2022 respectively behind the American Ashton Lambie and Ganna, is the seventh Italian to win world championship gold in the individual pursuit. The first was Fausto Coppi in both 1947 and 1949. Subsequently, Antonio Bevilacqua won gold in 1950 and 1951, Guido Messina in 1954, 1955 and 1956, Leandro Faggin in 1963, 1965 and 1966, Francesco Moser in 1976, and Filippo Ganna in 2016, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023. Italy has won 45 medals in this specialty with Milan’s gold, 18 of them gold.