BRITAIN'S Jason Kenny crashed out of the men's keirin final in dramatic fashion last night, ending his gold medal hopes at the UCI Track Cycling World Cup in Glasgow.
With two-time Olympic keirin champion Sir Chris Hoy on a break from international competition, Kenny, who won gold in both team and individual sprint in London, found himself having to step into the shoes of his team-mate.
After a storming ride in the semi-final Kenny looked on course to take the gold at the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome, but an over ambitious move on the final lap led to a touch of wheels which saw the rider come crashing to the ground, taking French rider Quentin Lafargue with him.
Stefan Boetticher (Germany) won gold, with Australian Peter Lewis (Team Jayco-Ais) clinching silver and Takashi Sakamoto (Japan) the bronze.
While Jess Varnish and Becky James combined their fire power to take team sprint gold on Friday, they found themselves going head-to-head in the semi-final of yesterday's individual event. After three fiercely-contested rounds of calculated cat-and-mouse tactics mixed with explosive strength, Varnish emerged triumphant. She progressed to the final against Kristina Vogel (Germany), but her battle against James had clearly taken much out of her and she had to settle for silver. James overcame Wai Sze Lee (Hong Kong) to win bronze.
Their medal haul will go some way to helping put the disappointment of London behind them where James, 20, failed to make the final Olympic squad and Varnish, 21, lost her chance of a medal when she was disqualified in the opening round of the team sprint alongside Victoria Pendleton.
"I'm pretty happy with silver," said Varnish. "I need to step it up a level now and win finals. It's the first individual final I've made in a world cup."
After taking gold in the team pursuit on Friday, double Olympic champion Laura Trott began her campaign in the omnium.She expressed some trepidation beforehand, but resolved to focus on the task at hand. "I'm not really looking forward to it; it's going to be hard," she said. "I just love riding my bike and that's it, really. That will get me through, hopefully."
Trott, reigning Olympic and world champion in the event, finished fourth in the flying lap and ninth in the 20km points race. At the end of two rounds, she lay in sixth position with the individual pursuit, scratch race and time trial, her strongest events, still to come.
There was disappointment in the men's individual pursuit, with Britain's Andy Tennant clearly still feeling the after effects of Friday's dramatic crash in the team pursuit which left him with six stitches to his right knee. Despite a pacy start in qualifying, Tennant faded in the final laps to finish fifth.
British Cycling Olympic Academy rider Lewis Oliva, competing for Wales, was another who come into contact with the unyielding Siberian pine boards. He had to be stretchered from the track after a nasty collision with Denis Dmitriev (Team RVL) in the keirin semi-final. He escaped broken bones but a decision will be made this morning on whether he is fit to contest the men's individual sprint today.
The conclusion of the men's omnium, meanwhile, saw Lucas Liss (Germany) take gold, Glenn O'Shea (Australia) silver and Unai Elorriaga (Spain) the bronze. Britain's Jon Dibben finished in fifth.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article