Yuan Liying of China set an unexpected world record on the second day of competition at the UCI Track Nations Cup in Konya, Turkey.

The 19 year old’s time of 9.976 in qualifying for the women’s sprint event was the first time in history that a woman has gone under 10 seconds for the flying 200 metres.

She takes the world record from Lea Sophie Friedrich, who recorded 10.029 at the Paris Olympics last summer.

Yuan’s previous best results have come in team sprint, with silver and bronze from the world championships in 2023 and 2024. She participated in the keirin in Paris 2024, but exited at the quarter final stage. She was involved in a crash just after the finish line, coming into contact with Steffie van der Peet, and taking out Nicky Degrendele; and DNS’ed in the Olympic sprint competition a couple of days later.

The session also saw national records – as far as we can tell – for Mina Sato (10.170), Hetty van de Wouw (10.191), Veronika Jaborníková (10.508), Nurul Izzah Izzati Mohd Asri (10.578) and Makaira Wallace (10.784).

Konya is situated at just over 1000 metres altitude: enough to make a difference, but not on par with noted high-altitude tracks like Mexico’s Aguascalientes (1887m), used by Jeffrey Hoogland to set his kilo record last October.

Yuan went on to win the overall, beating Alina Lysenko in two in the final. She will also contest the keirin tomorrow.

The first man to go under 10 seconds was Canada’s Curt Harnett, competing outdoors at Bogota, Colombia in September 1995: that record stood for a remarkable 11 years.