Japan’s Mina Sato and Kento Yamasaki are set to line up in Santiago, Chile later this week, aiming to defend the world keirin championships they memorably won in Ballerup last year.

The UCI’s 2025 track world championships begin on Wednesday, October 22, with the men’s keirin event taking place on Thursday, and the women’s on Sunday.

Both competitions will consist of a first round, with repechages; followed by quarter-final, semi-final and final rounds. Racing will get underway around 11am local time – but the men will get the afternoon off, with a break of several hours between the quarters and the evening’s latter stages, where the women are racing straight through to a mid-afternoon finale.

The event is among the first to use the UCI’s new online rider registration system, which allows us to see the provisional start lists. Riders shown below with a ✅ are currently showing as confirmed starters; but line-ups are always subject to change.

In the men’s event, the only top-ranked absentee is Muhammad Shah Firdaus Sahrom, recovering from recent knee surgery. On the women’s side, Clara Schneider and Rhian Edmunds both miss the event despite ranking in the UCI world top 10. Martha Bayona has not ridden a ranking event this calendar year.

Yamasaki features in a very strong Japanese men’s line-up. 2025 has not gone as he would have hoped, with only 4 wins from 28 starts in domestic Japanese keirin, and a modest 7th place at Japanese nationals, but he shown an ability to step up at major competitions. Asian champion Shinji Nakano and Japanese champion Kaiya Ota are more likely to challenge for podium places in Chile – but we would have said that in Denmark last year, too.

European champion Harrie Lavreysen will be hoping to reclaim the title he last won in 2022; he tops the world rankings, but lost to Mateusz Rudyk at Cottbus in June, his most recent ranking race. His great sprint rival, and the rider in historic form, is of course Matthew Richardson, who set and then broke the flying 200 world record on successive days in Konya in August.

Sato travels to Santiago as the top-ranked rider, not just in Japanese keirin, but globally: she holds a slender lead over Alina Lysenko, whom she beat twice in May’s Japan Track Cup. But with the start list set to feature former champions Ellesse Andrews and Lea Sophie Friedrich, Emma Finucane seeking a first keirin gold at an international championship, and the Dutch pair of Hetty van de Wouw and Steffie van der Peet, it won’t be a lazy Sunday afternoon for anyone.