Imagery circulating among the track sprint community seems to vindicate the UCI’s decision not to ratify the world record-beating time set by Matthew Richardson in sprint qualifying at the Track Nations Cup.

The UCI’s statement declared that their ruling was a result of ‘the last meters of the 200m distance being ridden off the track (on the safety zone)’.

As we noted in our report, the UCI regulations define the safety zone as being the area ‘immediately inside the blue band’ at the bottom of the track. We wrote: ‘Richardson must have ridden quite some way off line, if he was found to have strayed beyond the ‘blue band’ into the ‘safety zone’.’

Photos emerging from Konya seem to show that’s precisely what happened: Richardson crossed over the blue band in the home straight, and by a significant margin too.

On that basis, it’s entirely reasonable for the UCI to have made the decision they did.

But it’s peculiar that the race communiqué, notionally ‘approved by the Secretary of the Commissaires Panel’, labelled the time as ‘WR’ (world record).

And it’s unfortunate that the UCI’s announcement did not include an image like this: such clear-cut evidence would have eliminated all uncertainty, and would have put the public on their side.

It’s also a little strange that the infraction wasn’t spotted in ‘real time’; and the basis for allowing Richardson’s time to stand for the purpose of seeding, but not for the record book, isn’t entirely clear.

But on the matter in hand, on the basis of this photo, we’re on the UCI’s side.