Jennifer Valente defends Olympic Omnium gold, securing the best Summer Games for US cycling in 40 years

MONTIGNY-LE-BRETONNEUX, France (AP) — Jennifer Valente confidently defended her Olympic omnium title on Sunday, winning her second gold medal of the week and capping the most successful Summer Games for the U.S. cycling team in 40 years.

Valente achieved 144 points in the multi-discipline event, putting her well ahead of Poland’s Daria Pikulik with 131 points. Ally Wollaston from New Zealand beat Belgium’s Lotte Kopecky at the end of the 80-lap points race and took bronze.

Valente helped the Americans win the gold medal in the team pursuit earlier this week alongside Kristen Faulkner, who also won two gold medals after her triumph in the road race. Overall, the U.S. team won three gold medals and six gold medals in cycling, its best haul since the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, where the team won four gold medals and nine medals.

Earlier, in the final cycling session, Harrie Lavreysen won his third gold medal of the Paris Games by holding off Australia’s Matthew Glaetzer and Matthew Richardson in the men’s keirin final. Ellesse Andrews of New Zealand claimed her second gold and third medal overall by sweeping Lea Friedrich of Germany in the sprint final.

The session began with the Scratch Race, the first event in the Omnium, where riders try to complete 30 laps as quickly as possible. And just like Valente did at the Tokyo Games, she played the cat-and-mouse game perfectly to secure the maximum number of points.

Just as the peloton reached the final lap, two of her closest rivals – Kopecky and Britain’s Neah Evans – touched each other. Kopecky ended up in 17th place, potentially costing her a medal in the end, while Evans went down and finished last.

In the speed race, in which the leader of the last 25 laps receives one point each, Valente attacked early together with Pikulik and Georgia Baker from Australia and shared the 21 remaining sprint points.

The top three riders in the elimination race, in which one rider is eliminated every two laps, were also the last three on the track. Valente took the lead again and held Baker at bay at the finish to score the maximum points.

That gave Valente a 10-point lead heading into the points race, in which the top four riders in sprints receive points every 10 laps. But riders can also earn a 20-point bonus by completing a lap on the field, and that’s what the American did with 36 laps to go.

Valente had such a big lead that all she had to do to get back on the Olympic podium was avoid disaster.

In the Keirin, world champion Kevin Quintero of Colombia and two-time world championship silver medalist Jeffrey Hoogland of the Netherlands were eliminated in the same quarter-finals, in which only the first four of the six-man field advanced to the semi-finals.

While the favorites safely made it to the final, Briton Hamish Turnbull and German Luca Spiegel suffered serious falls towards the end of their semi-final. The two were treated by paramedics for several minutes, but both managed to leave the course.

It was not the last crash of their competition.

Just as Lavreysen reached the finishing straight of the final, Japan’s Kaiya Ota went off the track and collided with Jack Carlin behind him. The British rider crashed hard and slid to the end of the track, where he lay motionless for a moment while paramedics rushed to check on him. Carlin eventually got up and was able to leave the track.

Lavreysen won gold medals in the sprint and team sprint earlier this week, and then retired after narrowly missing out on a triple win at the Tokyo Games, where he won gold in both sprint events but had to settle for bronze in the keirin.

Richardson took home the silver medal on Sunday in addition to silver in the sprint and bronze in the team sprint, while Glaetzer won his second bronze medal of the Paris Games after also competing for Australia in the team sprint.

“I’ve been sprinting since I was 19. I’ve been racing track since I was 13 or 14,” Andrews said. “It’s been a 10-year dream to be here and I never thought it would be possible.”

Andrews, whose father Jon competed in the 1992 Barcelona Games, rode brilliantly in her best-of-three sprint final. The 24-year-old from Christchurch won the opening race from the front, held Friedrich at bay to the finish line, and then raced around the outside and past her German rival in the second race to win the gold medal.

Andrews also won the keirin and took silver in the team sprint together with Rebecca Petch and Shaane Fulton.

In the race for sprint bronze, Briton Emma Finucane swept away Dutchwoman Hetty van de Wouw and won both races from the front. For the 21-year-old from Wales, it was the second medal after her bronze medal in the Keirin.

“I would have loved to win gold, but this bronze medal means everything to me,” said Finucane. “I gave it my all in the last two races. I can’t give more than that.”

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