Mark Cavendish darts down the track and takes out the ride below him, with others - including Cavendish's gold medal rival Elia Viviani - hitting the Korean and his bike in spectacular fashion.
Cavendish causes horrible crash in Olympic points race
Perhaps pro cycling’s most successful ever sprinter, Mark Cavendish has finally taken a medal at an Olympic Games.
The Isle of Man rider had to settle for silver at the conclusion of the omnium in Rio last night, with Italian Elia Viviani taking the title after proving too strong over the combination of six events in three days.
Viviani went into the points race final event leading the way and stayed on top despite coming down hard in a nasty crash caused by Cavendish.
The Briton came down the track suddenly and took Korea's Park Sanghoon off his bike in spectacular fashion.
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Cavendish stayed upright and seemed untroubled by the incident but others were not so lucky.
When Park fell he slipped down the track and Viviani and Glenn O’Shea from Australia also crashed in the dramatic incident after hitting the Korean and his bike.
The racing continued for a period before being stopped so Park could be attended to by medics; the Korean taken from the track strapped into a stretcher.
Viviani and O'Shea were able to continue, though missed two sprint opportunities to score points.
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And when racing resumed the champion of four years ago Lasse Norman Hansen of Denmark continued to light up the race with a series of attacks having already gained a lap and leapt over Cavendish into the silver medal position.
The Dane had trailed the British rider by a significant 26 points going into the last event and put in an epic ride to close that gap.
However, Cavendish took enough points in the final three sprints to secure the silver medal, though Viviani was simply too good and continued to collect too many points in the sprints to be dislodged from top spot.
Park is carried from the track taking in oxygen and strapped to a stretcher after his horrible crash.
In the end, the Italian was a very impressive winner from Cavendish, though Norman Hansen perhaps put the best effort in during the last race, doing his very best in trying to defend his title.
Cavendish said afterwards he was pleased to have finally won a medal at his third Olympic Games but added the thoughts of coming back to the track set-up for Tokyo 2020 did not appeal to him.
He also said he would have much preferred to be ending the race with gold and looked disappointed with the result, though had perked up by the time the podium presentation got underway.
Cavendish had earlier in the day been disqualified from the elimination race very early when he was judged to have ridden into the blue area at the bottom of the track in order to undertake riders and avoid elimination.
The omnium podium; Cavendish, Viviani and Norman Hansen (Photo: Sirotti)
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