MONTIGNY-LE-BRETONNEUX, France (AP) — Benjamin Thomas knew exactly where he was in the middle of the finale of the multidiscipline omnium — on his back, watching everyone else go by him on the track.
Yet with unflappable calm, even amid the tumult of the chaotic event known as the points race, the French rider stood up from his late-race crash and brushed himself off. He checked his bike, mounted up and rejoined the fray of cyclists trying to accumulate as many points as possible in sprints that happen every 10 laps.
And by the time bell sounded for the last time in the 100-lap race, Thomas was even more certain of where he was — on his way to an Olympic gold medal at the Paris Games.
Thomas finished with 164 points Thursday night, beating out Portuguese silver medalist Iúri Leitão, who had 153. The omnium bronze medal went to Fabio van den Bossche of Belgium, who led going into the points race and wound up with 131.
“I tried to stay calm,” Thomas said of his crash. “First, I checked my bike and everything was OK. I looked at myself, nothing was broken. Fortunately, I crashed on the right, and it was not such a hard crash. I watched the screen and saw I was still in the lead. I knew the Portuguese rider was really strong, but not so fast, so I said I would put pressure on him, stay on his wheel.
“I’m really proud of what I did today,” Thomas added. “I took so much pleasure on the track. It was really a game.”
In the women’s keirin, world champion Ellesse Andrews won the first Olympic track cycling title for New Zealand in two decades when she held off Dutch rider Hetty van de Wouw and Britain’s Emma Finucane in a sprint to the finish line.
The keirin is a sprint race involving six riders who begin by pacing for three laps behind a motorized scooter. When it pulls off, the riders are left with three laps to conduct an elbow-to-elbow, high-speed dash to the finish.
Andrews quickly went to the front as Finucane gave chase, but she was comfortably clear coming out of the fourth turn of the steeply banked velodrome. Van de Wouw came through late on Finucane’s inside to snatch away the silver medal.
It was an especially gratifying victory for Andrews, who survived the repechages and made it all the way to the finals at the Tokyo Games, where she wound up with the silver medal behind Shanne Braspennincx.
“It’s going to take a long time to sink in,” Andrews said. “We have an amazing cycling culture in New Zealand, so to bring back a gold medal for the country, for myself, for the sport, for everyone who supports me, it’s just incredible.”
Missing from the finals was Germany’s Lea Friedrich, who won her second world title in the event two years ago on the same track at the Vélodrome National de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. Friedrich was trying to swing around the outside of her semifinal race when Steffie van der Peet moved up the track, forcing Friedrich to bail out of her sprint to avoid a crash.
Friedrich was out of the medal hunt, while Van der Peet was edged by Finucane in a photo finish for a spot in the finals.
It was a tough ending to a painful night for the Dutch rider. In the quarterfinals, Van der Peet had crossed the finish line when Chinese rider Yuan Liying crashed into her, taking both of them down and leaving her with bloody floor burns.
There was less drama in the omnium, a four-race endurance test similar to the decathlon or heptathlon in track and field.
It begins with the 40-lap scratch race, where riders simply try to be first to finish. Then comes the 40-lap tempo race, where riders accumulate points for intermediate sprints or lapping the field. Third is the elimination race, where the last rider every two laps is out. And the conclusion is the 100-lap points race, where every 10 laps the four leading riders earn points.
Thomas trailed by eight points going into the finale, but the French rider was constantly on the attack and quickly moved into the lead. He got bonus points for taking a lap on the field early, then did it again later in the race. And when Thomas went down on the back stretch, he simply got back up, reboarded his bike and was on his way again.
Leitão was the only one who could catch him the last 10 laps, and only by taking a lap on the field. When the world champ from Portugal tried to attack, Thomas marked him, slotting in right behind and going with him all the way to the finish.
“The emotions are always there,” Leitão said. “The race is so long and so hard, and the riders are so good, you have to keep fighting, and when we crossed the line, I saw I did it. I won a medal. It’s unbelievable to achieve it.”
In the men’s sprint quarterfinals earlier in the night, Harrie Lavreysen of the Netherlands swept his best-of-three match against Poland’s Mateusz Rudyk to send the reigning Olympic champion into Friday night’s semifinals. Matthew Richardson of Australia likewise rolled past Yuta Obara of Japan in their match.
The other two quarterfinals were far less straightforward.
Jeffrey Hoogland of the Netherlands lost his opening sprint against Hamish Turnbull of Britain, then needed a photo finish to win their second and force a decider. The reigning Olympic silver medalist kept that race pinned against the top of the track until the final lap, when he dove low down the backstretch and built a lead that Turnbull could not overcome.
Kaiya Ota thought he swept Jack Carlin in their quarterfinal, but the Japanese rider was relegated in the second race for deviating from his line. That forced a decider, and the Olympic bronze medalist from Britain beat Ota by the slimmest of margins.
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