Madison magnificence leads Olympic medal haul

Team GB tops the cycling medal table for the fourth time in a row, reports Vern Pitt

- Vern Pitt

Great Britain topped the cycling medal table for the fourth Olympics in a row last week with medals coming from a varied set of sources.

Even before racing started in the velodrome the squad had claimed golds in mountain bike, BMX and BMX freestyle, all disciplines the team has not won in before.

Also unusually for the GB squad, last week’s track action saw its greatest successes in the bunch races.

Only the women’s team pursuit squad claimed a medal - silver behind Germany’s new world record-setting team - in the timed events (see p14). Britain’s first gold to come from the velodrome was from Matt Walls who dominated a world-class omnium field.

Afterwards, he said: “It’s been a long road, through all this pandemic. The last track racing I did was the European championships last year, so I didn’t really know how I was always doing. It’s been a long road, but it’s all been worth it.”

He was followed the next day by Katie Archibald and Laura Kenny in the Madison.

There was then further success in the men’s Madison where Ethan Hayter and Walls paired up to win silver.

That combined with three medals in the sprints – gold in the keirin for Jason Kenny, silver in the men’s team sprint and bronze in the individual sprint for Jack Carlin – brought GB’s total cycling medals in line with those won in Rio.

A plan comes together

No performance was more striking than Archibald and Kenny’s Madison gold, where they claimed an early lead and never looked in danger of relinquishing it for the whole race.