The final track cycling events of the 2024 Paris Olympics have wrapped up, and they saw some impressive performances that *almost* convinced us to watch track cycling more.
New Zealand had a very good last week, with Ellesse Andrews winning women's Keirin. Hetty van de Wouw of the Netherlands and Emma Finucane of Great Britain finished silver and bronze, respectively. (Can we also mention how absolutely 🔥 the New Zealand kit is? The stark black and fern motif looks so cool. We almost want to do a best of Olympic cycling kit, there were some other great ones out there.)
Other than the funny bike situation, Keirin seems like one of the track events we understand best. It's a bike race, you race together and whoever is fastest wins. There's a pacing motorcycle on the track? It speeds up, or it just pulls off? I dunno, that's weird, but at least it's just becomes a race, and very fast one!
Sprint is a different animal, and seemingly a misnomer. They just ride around slowly, looking at each other. It's like the silliest, slowest part of a road race that ends in a two-up sprint. And they do it again? Okay, whatever, that's fine.
It was more than fine for New Zealand, because Ellesse Andrews took gold in that event as well, followed by Lea Friedrich of Germany for silver and Emma Finucane of Great Britain for bronze, added to her silver in the Keirin.
And then we come to the omnium, a track cycling race that we truly do not understand. Seriously, what is this event? You race around and there are periodic sprints, and you score points on certain laps, and the points add up over multiple races? This just sounds like an event that makes you race a bike and do math in your head as you keep an eye on competitors and laps, and that makes our heads hurt.
This event was dominated by American Jennifer Valente, who already had a gold to her name in women's team pursuit. She entered the final race in the lead, and kept it all the way for gold. Poland’s Daria Pikulik won silver, and New Zealand’s Ally Wollaston took home the bronze after holding off Lotte Kopecky of Belgium.
(For the record, Australia's yellow and green kit with indigenous designs on the sleeves also looks very cool.)
But it gets worse! Because the madison is a very similar event that is like a tag-team relay involving tagging in and out, and half of the riders aren't engaged at any particular moment, and they sling-shot each other around, all while keeping track of points and competitors and laps. 🫠
The madison was apparently (who knows, we couldn't even tell) won by a resurgent Italian team made up of familiar names in road racing, Vittoria Guazzini and Chiara Guazzini. Great Britain's Elinor Barker and Neah Evans took home silver while Maike van der Duin and Lisa van Belle of the Netherlands leapt into third place after lapping the pack to score big took home bronze.
Our heads hurt just trying to describe it all, but it was exciting racing, and a nice send-off for cycling at the 2024 Paris Olympics!
