On the ultimate day of the 2024 Paris Olympic Video games, reigning Olympic champion Jennifer Valente (USA) maintained her focus all through the four-race girls’s Omnium, securing the gold medal as soon as once more.
Valente’s gold is her fifth Olympic medal general, earned throughout three Video games, and her second gold from Paris. She beforehand gained a silver in crew pursuit on the Rio 2016 Olympics and each a silver and gold on the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
“There’s nothing higher than this and I am tremendous, tremendous happy and enthusiastic about this,” Valente mentioned.
“I feel every Olympic medal is approached as its personal entity and also you goal a race and also you do what you may to arrange and that’s usually both a complete quad, it is a four-year course of and even an eight-year course of or a complete profession course of. And so choosing occasions and specializing in these and actually concentrating on what you are making an attempt to perform.”
“Every Olympic medal is its personal course of and its personal journey.”
The technique on the ultimate day of racing on the Olympics was to remain calm within the sizzling velodrome.
“Staying cool, not overheating was an enormous one, however so far as racing goes, taking every race as a stand-alone mainly and actually sort of come out swinging for each after which reset for the following race,” mentioned Valente.
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After putting first within the scratch race and second within the tempo race, Valente led all the Elimination race, choosing off opponents one after the other. By ending first within the third occasion, she added 40 factors to her complete, extending her result in 10 factors over Australia’s Georgia Baker.
The American rider knew that something may occur within the chaotic ultimate race, the factors race.
“An Omnium is definitely not over till it is all the best way over and bunch racing might be so unpredictable and plenty of issues can occur, there might be crashes, individuals can take a late lap, and each time there are factors the leaderboard reshuffles a bit bit,” she mentioned. “So it’s important to proceed to guage what’s taking place.”
After incomes 5 factors within the first dash of the factors race, Valente intently monitored Baker, who was narrowing the hole. With beneath 50 laps to go, a number of riders lapped the sphere, every gaining 20 factors. Sensing the urgency, Valente made a decisive transfer to hitch them, efficiently lapping the sphere and including 20 essential factors to her complete. Valente clinched the Olympic title with 144 factors.
Whereas each Daria Pikulik (Poland) and Ally Wollaston (New Zealand) competing on the highway with Girls’s WorldTour groups, Valente views herself primarily as a observe racer.
“I am a observe racer earlier than I’m anything the place plenty of my opponents I feel are highway racers or cyclocross or mountain bikers or wherever they arrive from and throughout disciplines so much,” she mentioned.
“The observe is so distinctive, it is so quick, it’s so many issues taking place and the sensation that you simply get, going as laborious as you may right into a bend and you may really feel your self being pushed in opposition to the observe, you may really feel the pace and, and every little thing, that’s most likely what I really like probably the most – simply using the observe and racing the observe.”
When requested if she deliberate to compete on the 2028 Los Angeles video games, Valente replied: “I feel I will try to rush to get to the closing ceremony proper now. That is the one factor I am fascinated with.”
