August 10/24 15:00 pm - Olympic Games: Track Day 6

Posted by Editoress on 08/10/24
 

Portugal Takes First Gold on Day 6

Portugal won the men's Madison, only Olympic title awarded on Saturday, Day 6 of the track competition, the country's first gold medal of these Games. Canada finished 13th. Canada also had riders move on to tomorrow's competitions in both the women's Sprint and the men's Keirin.

The second day of the women's Sprint saw only defending Olympic champion Kelsey Mitchell still in the competition. Mitchell had to go through the repechage to make it to the quarterfinal round. Unfortunately, she then came up against Germany's Lea Friedrich, the fastest qualifier, who shattered Mitchell's world record for the 200 metre yesterday. Friedrich proved to be too fast for Mitchell, who will race tomorrow in the 5th to 8th final. The semifinals will see Friedrich, current world champion Emma Finucane (Great Britain), Keirin Olympic champion Ellesse Andrews (New Zealand) and Hetty ven de Wouw (Netherlands) move on to the semifinals.

"I had to race two people who were two-tenths faster than me in qualifying," said Mitchell. "So I had to try and race better tactically. It didn't work against [Andrews], so I was happy to get the win in the reps, where I felt really strong. Making it to quarters ... I wanted a medal, I wanted to bring home a medal. Obviously winning in Tokyo set the bar really high and I would have loved to repeat and bring one home for Canada. I'm obviously disappointed, and I have no one to blame but myself. It's been a rocky two years ... I did everything I could to avoid this outcome, so it's frustrating.

"After the Keirin, there was a moment of realizing how far away I was from the rest of them. And qualifying with a 10.28 ... I'm just not fast enough. The blessing is that I know I'm not at my best, so there's a lot more to come. I'm not done yet. So tomorrow, I think I'm going to try and go out there and enjoy it, try and get fifth for Canada; it's not a medal, but I'm going to do the best I can. I love representing everybody back home."

In the men's Keirin, both Nicke Wammes and James Hedgcock made it through to tomorrow's second round, although both had to go through the repechage. Wammes was initially listed as third in his repechage, but the French rider, Rayan Helal, was relegated for passing below him on the blue band, so Wammes moved up to second. Hedgcock, after winning his repechage, had to ride it and win it a second time - a bad crash by Kwesi Brown (Trinidad and Tobago) late in the first race forced the officials to neutralize and re-run it.

"He [Helal] was moving up quite a bit under the line," explained Wammes. "I was getting squeezed, I was on the black line and he was below me ... that's the Olympic Games, everyone is fighting for a spot in the next round. They've [officials] been a little interesting on calls so far this week, so I'm glad they made that one, it was the proper decision.

"It's been a tough week, I've really struggled to find my legs here. I went into this one to just give it everything; it's once every four years, so just give it all. I don't think I've had the best legs I've ever had, like I said, I've struggled all week. I definitely wanted a lot more at these Olympics, so I feel that this was the break I needed. So reset and come back tomorrow to see what I can do."

The men's Madison came down to a three-way competition between Italy, Portugal and defending champion Denmark, all of whom took a lap. Portugal took maximum points in the last four sprints as every other team began to fade, to lock up the win with 55 points, followed by Italy at 47 and Denmark at 41. The pace of the race was such that half of the teams were lapped, including Canada's Mathias Guillemette and Michael Foley, who eventually finished 13th.

"We tried our best," said Foley. "We had a bad moment at the beginning and we just got split off the back; it was just an attention thing, we weren't really on the limit yet. But we tried really hard to stay on that lap [not get lapped], and I think we paid for it later in the race. It's a tough race to recover from once you go into the red; we just pushed ourselves in too deep.

"We knew it was going to be hard; 60k an hour for 50 minutes is hard any day of the week, but we wanted to try to be well positioned and stay on lap. Obviously, that's not where we ended up, but we did try our best. We gave everything, so it's hard to be too upset, but we need to get to Europe to practice."

Michael Foley also compared these Games to his Tokyo experience. "These Games had fans, which is a massive difference, and I also had a different role in the team, being the old guy [25] instead of the baby, but I think there were some impressive performances from some of my teammates, and I'm proud of them for that. I hope I did them justice in my role and I'm looking forward to seeing how they progress as a team."


Photos

It is day 6 of track cycling at the Olympic Games in Paris