Tonight's omnium finale at the European Track Championships may feel right now like 'the one that got away' for Ireland's Lara Gillespie. But it has signaled her emergence as talent at senior level after years of success on the boards as an U23.
The 22-year-old Wicklow woman clearly went out on the track tonight in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, with a medal on her mind and went all guns blazing to achieve that goal.
While it was snatched from her grasp in the cruelest fashion - after scoring sprint points and also going on successful attacks for lap gains - she will emerge from these championships as a bona fide senior contender.
Gillespie moved up to the silver medal position, then to bronze, only to lose 3rd place by a single point based on the order of the final sprint in the points race; the last act of the four-event omnium.
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Rather than taking home her first senior silver wear at a Europeans as an individual rider, she lost out by a single point to France's Valentine Fortin, the elimination race European champion from three tears ago.
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Gillespie, who had already been part of the Irish team pursuit line-up that claimed 4th place at these Europeans, went about her business early and often in the points race this evening. She began 7th overall after the first three events in the omnium.
Once the points race began, she was among the first attackers, soon winning 5 points in the first sprint. Then followed a lap gain, another 20 points in the bag, and then another, before the race was halted for a time to allow track repairs after a crash.
To add to her early 5 point win - and two lap gains - Gillespie also took 3 and 4 points in sprints 6 and 8, and it was that eighth sprint, the final one of the race, that saw her drop from 3rd to 4th in the final standings.
The sprint was won by Daria Pikulik of Poland, for 10 points, from Fortin, for six points, and then Gillespie, on four points. Great Britain's Neah Evans was 4th in the that last sprint, which ensured she took the silver medal.
But it was the French rider Fortin's ability to pip Gillespie on the line in the final sprint, by just one place, which saw the Irish rider miss out on the bronze to her rival.
Gillespie had given herself such a strong chance of a medal going into the points race with her consistency in the first three omnium events. She was 5th in the scratch race, 9th in the tempo race and 10th in the elimination race, that latter result perhaps her undoing in a bid for a medal.
