Chris Hoy shed tears of joy and Victoria Pendleton’s bittersweet sobs echoed around the London Velodrome as Britain ended their Olympic track cycling campaign with seven titles on a thrilling, highly emotional evening on Tuesday.
Hoy bagged his sixth Games gold with a comprehensive win in the keirin minutes after Pendleton ended her scintillating career with defeat against her archrival Anna Meares of Australia.
With six-time Olympic champion Hoy extremely unlikely to defend his titles in four years in Rio de Janeiro, the future of British cycling is in the safe hands of new sprint king Jason Kenny and Laura Trott, who at 20 claimed her second Games gold by winning the women’s omnium to add to her team pursuit title.
Photo: Reuters
Trott and Hoy’s golds earned the host nation their sixth and seventh titles in London, matching their record medal haul from Beijing four years ago.
Hoy’s title triggered the biggest roar from a rapturous crowd, who for the first time let slip a few boos when Pendleton was relegated from her first leg against Meares.
Pendleton, who had also been relegated from the team sprint, had beaten Meares to the line by a clipped nail, but officials ruled she had left the sprinting lane, though it had first looked like she had been elbowed by the Australian.
Photo: Reuters
“I won’t even bother to watch it again, I am starting a new life now,” Pendleton said.
In the second leg, Meares, a fine tactician, forced Pendleton into the lead with a now rarely seen standstill, before overcoming the Briton in the final banking, punching the air in delight before the finish line.
“Victoria is such a hard-fought opponent and she’s dominated the sport for so long,” Meares, often dubbed the villain in the long-standing rivalry between the two, told reporters after securing Australia’s only track gold in London. “It’s been such a difficult challenge and to be able to win the Olympic title, for me, it’s so special. I’ve tried so much and worked so hard for a long period of time, and I’ve asked a lot of people around me to do the same, so it feels like this is a just reward.”
Perhaps Pendleton felt the same, applauding Meares, before completing a farewell lap and bursting into tears after getting off her bike, abandoning her title and years of sacrifices.
Her face was covered in tears again on the podium, but those were tears of relief as they signaled the end of a career that she, deep inside, did not really want.
“I was crying and people said you must be so sad, but I am just so happy it is over, and it is over without a doubt,” the 31-year-old Pendleton told reporters. “It would be my worst nightmare right now to have to relive the last week of my life. Just hanging around waiting. The expectation of the team, it is too much.”
Watching her bid farewell to the crowd and pose for the cameras was the twinkling Trott, with Kenny the next big thing in British track cycling.
“She has had a massive influence on me, she has been my idol ever since I saw her in Beijing, well before that really,” said Trott, who won the omnium ahead of Sarah Hammer of the US by a single point thanks to a perfectly executed final time trial. “She is such an inspiration. All through when I was a junior and first-year senior, I just wanted to be like her and just achieve what she has achieved. She is a role model on and off the bike, I think you can’t ask for a better role model than Vicky.”
Kenny would think the same of Hoy, who beat Tour de France champion Bradley Wiggins on “gold difference” with his sixth title, his seventh medal, to become Britain’s most successful Olympian.
The 36-year-old Scot, in tears on the podium afterwards, retained his keirin title in typical fashion, powering into an early lead in the six-man, adrenaline-filled final.
Germany’s Maximilian Levy, who clinched the silver medal, pushed him to the limit as he gained a slight advantage on the final bend, but Hoy finished it off in style with a devastating surge in the home straight.
“We have seen a legend, not just in the sport, but as a person. The magnitude of the win is unbelievable. Chris pulled victory from the jaws of defeat there,” Britain’s head coach Shane Sutton said.
For the first time, four medals were awarded at a single cycling event when New Zealand’s Simon van Velthooven and Dutchman Teun Mulder both took bronze after a photo finish could not separate them.
“The keirin is a lottery and you never take anything for granted in it. I can’t describe the feelings I have at the moment,” said Hoy, who started his Olympic medal harvest with silver in the team sprint in Sydney 12 years ago.
If the keirin really is a lottery, Hoy is certainly a lucky man.
Wilyer Abreu watched the ball leave the park and tossed his bat high in the air. His Venezuela teammates streamed out of the dugout in celebration. The comeback was on and the win over the reigning World Baseball Classic (WBC) champion Japan was within reach. Japan, their 11-game WBC winning streak on the line, held a 5-4 lead in the sixth inning of Saturday’s thrilling quarter-final matchup when Abreu put his team ahead with the biggest swing of the game: a three-run shot off Hiromi Itoh that sent the loanDepot Park crowd into a passionate roar and helped seize Venezuela’s 8-5
A BREATHLESS BATTLE: France clinched the championship in a vicious back-and-forth match with England, denying Ireland the title by just a few points France won back-to-back Six Nations titles after beating England 48-46 on a last-second penalty-kick by Thomas Ramos in a thriller for the ages on Saturday. England scored their seventh try in the 77th minute and converted for 46-45. If the score held for a few more minutes, Ireland would have been crowned the champion. But France pressed yet again with 14 men, lost possession, regained it, and earned two simultaneous penalties after the fulltime siren. Captain Antoine Dupont debated with referee Nika Amashukeli where the penalty spots were. Ramos, who did not miss a goal-kick all night, finally lined up his seventh
Home runs are greeted with a celebratory shot of espresso and the donning of an Armani jacket. Victories are marked with bottles of red wine while the soaring voice of opera singer Andrea Bocelli echoes through the locker room. Welcome to baseball, Italian-style. Written off as 80-1 underdogs before the World Baseball Classic started, Italy’s fairytale tournament has carried them all the way to today’s (Taipei time) semi-finals in Miami against Venezuela. On Saturday, Italy — who scored a stunning upset of a star-studded US lineup during the pool phase — kept their unbeaten campaign alive with a nail-biting 8-6
Kimi Antonelli became Formula 1’s second-youngest race winner with a composed drive to victory for Mercedes in an eventful Chinese Grand Prix yesterday. The 19-year-old Italian was the youngest pole position starter and briefly lost the lead to Lewis Hamilton of Ferrari at the start, but retook it soon after and was in control after that. “We did it! We did it!” Antonelli shouted to his team on the radio amid laughs and whoops. It was another 1-2 finish for Mercedes to start the season as Antonelli’s teammate George Russell came through a battle with both Ferraris to finish second. Lewis Hamilton was
RSS