Ireland's madison pairing of Shannon McCurley and Emily Kay say their Olympic participation dealt a cruel blow today in Japan when their ride in the Madison event was ruined by a crash.
While they tried to continue in the race after McCurley's crash, they lost a lap to that incident and they were eventually non-finishers; a really devastating blow to both women.
McCurley crashed with 104 laps to go in the 120-lap, or 30km,
race. She appeared to tangle with Italy’s Elisa Balsamo coming out of the bend
into the home straight.
Both the Italian and Irish rider slid down off the track,
after what was a heavy fall near the back of the pack.
Staff from the Irish and Italian teams rushed to their aid with new bikes and tried to help them back onto their feet and back into the race.
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And while McCurley did eventually remount and made a
brave bid to continue, she and Kay lost two laps as a result of the crash, from
which they never recovered.
After limping on for a long time they withdrew from the
race with about 30 laps remaining; a bitter blow for both.
Kay has another chance at these Games as she has been
selected to fill the omnium place available to Ireland.
However, the Olympics are now over for McCurley, who was
making her second appearance having qualified for Rio 2016 in the keirin; the
only Irish track rider to qualify five years ago.
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In the madison event today, Laura Kenny and Katie
Archibald overcame their disappointment at not winning gold in the team pursuit
to take gold; dominating the race from start to finish on the Izu Velodrome.
It was Kenny’s fifth gold medal in an Olympic Games. She
is now the only British woman to win golds at three Olympics and she is the
most successful female Olympian in cycling.
The world champions - Dutch pair of Kirsten Wild and Amy
Pieters – were involved in a crash with about 70 laps to go today and finished
outside the medals.
In the end the British pair won an incredible 10 of the
12 sprints, including the final sprint with double points, as well as gaining
laps through the race.
They concluded the event with 78 points, more than double
the Danes on 35 in the silver medal position, with Russia 3rd on 26 points.
Ireland was one of three nations not to finish the
crash-hit race, with Japan and Hong Kong also abandoning.
We’ll hopefully have more to come from McCurley and Kay,
both of whom did very well to get this far and have suffered a very
disappointing day.
Apologies of the poor quality of the videos below.
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