Olympic Round-Up

While I was gone there was more Olympic cycling to cover. Before I get into the cycling-related parts of the break for me I think it’s a good idea to try and wrap that up and remember where I’d got to.

You’ll undoubtedly know much of this already but let’s start with the track events.

The sprint finals took place on the Monday and Jason Kenny continued the medal haul with a powerful gold, which I witnessed through the weird viewpoint of the French silver medallist Gregory Bauge as he was interviewed on television and panels debated the strength of British cycling on TF1.

In the women’s sprint Vicky Pendleton wasn’t able to defend her title and on the Tuesday ended her Olympic career with a silver to Australia’s Anna Meares.

Also on Tuesday Laura Trott won another gold in the women’s Omnium, going one better than Ed Clancy and was delighted. The other senior star of the track, Chris Hoy won the Men’s Keirin event and stepped again into the record books as Britain’s most decorated Olympian, now it’s clear that we make those records in cycling, not in rowing.

The last cycling events were the BMX and the Mountain Biking towards the end of the week. BMX should have seen some medals but in the end Reade could only manage 6th in the final after a poor start and Liam Phillips crashed out in the final, which he’s slightly making a habit of in major competition.. Either way the track looked incredible and the comments on Twitter suggest that BMX surprised people with how dangerous it is. Perhaps now i can get more sympathy for my hurt elbow?

The mountain biking saw another crash which put Team GB’s Liam Killeen out with a broken ankle. Defending Champion Julian Absalon punctured and dropped back in the field leaving World Champion Jaroslav Kulhav to win a sprint finish against Nico Schurter. In the women’s event Annie Last led the field for a lap before finishing in a respectable 8th behind gold medallist Julie Bresset, who at least gave TF1 a chance to put together some dramatic riding and crying montages as they bagged a cycling gold.

So that was it for Olympic cycling in a nutshell. Team GB finished with a total of 12 cycling medals, 8 of which were gold which is the sort of result that definitely makes French TV notice.

There was other cycling to cover from my break, but more of that tomorrow.

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