American Jennifer Valente retained her Olympic women’s omnium title after the Paris 2024 event at the Saint Quentin En Yvelines National Velodrome, where she won ahead of Poland’s Daria Pikulik and New Zealand’s Ally Wollaston.
Jennifer Valente, who also won the gold medal in Tokyo 2020 and was double world champion in 2022 and 2023, this Sunday in Paris confirmed her superiority in the discipline retaining the title, from being first in scratch, second in sprint, first in elimination and seventh points race, to total 144 units.
The world road champion, Belgian Lotte Kopecky, started with difficulties and gained strength throughout the races, but it was not enough to get on the podium. She could only finish fourth. Silver went to Poland’s Daria Pikulik and bronze went to New Zealand’s Ally Wollaston.
On the other hand, after her gold in the keirin and her second place in the team sprint, New Zealand’s Ellesse Andrews became the first woman in history to achieve a double in keirin-sprint in the same Olympic Games, a feat she accomplished at the National Velodrome of Saint Quentin En Yvelines.
Andrews, 24, won the sprint gold medal, Germany’s Lea Friedrich the silver and Great Britain’s Emma Finucane the bronze. The Olympic champion took the title with a time of 10.685, at an average of 68.467 km/hour.
The Netherlands’ Harrie Lavreysen, gold in individual and team sprint, won a third gold medal at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, this time in keirin, matching the performance achieved by Great Britain’s Jason Kenny at Rio de Janeiro 2016.
Lavreysen, already a five-time Olympic champion, won ahead of Australians Matthew Richardson, silver medalist, and Matthew Glaetzer, who took bronze.
In the final straight there was a crash involving the other three finalists, Britain’s Jack Carlin, Muhammad Shah Firdaus Sahrom of Malaysia and Shinji Nakano of Japan. Seventh place went to Colombian Cristian Ortega.