World Cycling Championships : Frost Wins Points Race; Nitz Finishes Third

Denmark’s Dan Frost took an early lead and held off two challenges to win a gold medal Monday in the 50-kilometer amateur points race at the World Cycling Championships.

Olaf Ludwig, East Germany’s best-known road racer, got the silver medal, and American Leonard Nitz, who won the points race silver medal in 1981, took the bronze.

It was the first medal for an American man in this year’s world championships.

Frost and Ludwig both finished with 32 points, but a complicated tiebreaker gave the victory to Frost, who won three sprints and came in second four times, and was among the leaders throughout the contest. The sprints are held periodically throughout the points race.

Nitz, 29, of Sacramento, was trailing going into the final laps, but won the final sprint, worth 10 points, to place third with 28 points. The Soviet Union’s Marate Satybaldiev also had 28 points but was fourth on tiebreakers.

Nitz has said he will retire after the world championships.

The amateur points race was finished in 1:00:15.88 for a speed of 49.78 kilometers per hour.

Earlier Monday, the American tandem match sprint team of Kit Kyle and David Lindsey beat the Hungarian duo of Peter Pais and Bela Pinter, 2-0, in the semifinals of the best of three events.

The defending world champions, Vitezslav Voboril and Roman Rehounek of Czechoslovakia, downed Italians Andrea Faccini and Roberto Nicotti to move into the gold medal race against the Americans.

More than 800 cyclists from 61 countries are in Colorado Springs for the first world championships to be held in the United States since 1912, when they were held in Newark, N.J.