With such a stellar field in Santiago for this year’s men’s keirin world championship, it was inevitable that several big names would not see the latter stages. But who would have expected the fastest man in history, Matthew Richardson to be among those missing out?

The Great Britain sprinter, who set new world records for the flying 200 metres just two months ago, found himself in an outrageous quarter final, including not only his great rival Harrie Lavreysen, but also Kaiya Ota, Nicholas Paul, Tom Derache and Daniel Barber, all competing for a top four finish.

Richardson was last across the line, with his former Australian teammate Barber just ahead, but also failing to qualify. And Richo’s new teammate Harry Ledingham-Horn also finished the day early, coming fifth in the third quarter final.

Ota, winner of both his races this morning, will be Japan’s only representative in the later stages. Asian champion Shinji Nakano was relegated to last place in the first quarter final, judged to have entered the sprinter’s lane when an opponent was already there. And earlier in the day, we saw outgoing world champion Kento Yamasaki fail to qualify from the first round: he was last in his first race, then third in his rep, a very tight finish with Martin Čechman and Nick Wammes.

Mikhail Yakovlev looks to be in good form today, with two convincing wins out of two rides so far. Look out too for Individual Neutral Athlete Nikita Kiriltsev: the European U23 champion was second to the Israeli rider in the first round, then beat Kevin Quintero and Jeffrey Hoogland in his quarter.

Three-time champion Harrie Lavreysen has not had an easy day of it: he needed a repechage win to get out of the first round, and only managed third in his quarter final. But he gets a few hours of valuable recovery time, before the semi finals this evening.

They are back on track at 6.14pm Santiago time (10.14pm London, 6.14am Tokyo). The top three from each semi will contest the medals at 7.50pm local time (11.50pm London, 7.50am Tokyo). Good luck finding TV coverage, wherever you are!