IZU, Japan — The British duo of Laura Kenny and Katie Archibald won the Olympic debut of the women’s Madison in easy fashion Friday night, while Harrie Lavreysen rallied past Dutch teammate Jeffrey Hoogland to win the men’s sprint.
In the Madison, teams of two take the track at once but only one rider at a time is considered in the race. They are allowed to tag each other at any point in the 120-lap event, giving them an opportunity to slingshot their teammates ahead of their competition, and points are awarded for the top four finishers each 10 laps.
There are also 20 bonus points awarded when a team gains a lap on the rest of the field, and that’s where the medalists separated themselves. They worked together late in the race to put everyone else a lap behind them.
Kenny and Archibald’s real dominance, though, came in the sprints. The British pair won 10 of the 12 opportunities to earn points, including the final sprint worth double points — Kenny was so far ahead of the field that she was able to throw her right fist into the air in celebration of her fifth Olympic gold medal and sixth overall.
It was Archibald’s second gold medal and third overall with the other two medals coming in team pursuit.
“We were really strict in our approach,” Archibald said. “We’ve been playing around with what we think our game plan would be for this race for a while. Any time we kind of varied from our skillset, it went wrong.”
Well, everything went right Friday night.
Britain ended up with 78 points. The Danish pair of Amalie Dideriksen and Julie Leth earned 35 points to take the silver medal and the Russian duo of Gulnaz Khatuntseva and Marila Novolodskaia had 26 points for bronze.
“It’s very difficult to make a strategy in this race. It’s all about collaborating and supporting each other,” Khatuntseva said. “We found a good balance between sprinting and having a good break.”
It was a rough event for the two-time defending world champions from the Netherlands and medal favorite Belgium. The Dutch and Belgians were involved in a crash on Lap 71, and the Belgians crashed again later in the race.
Things went better for the Netherlands in the men’s sprint, where an all-Dutch final in the men’s sprint seemed a foregone conclusion after qualifying. Lavreysen and Hoogland roared to the Olympic record over 200 meters with a time that was the exact same down to the thousandth of a second.
Hoogland first had to dispatch reigning silver medalist Denis Dmitriev in the semifinals. He stalked the Russian in both of their heats, and both times Hoogland pulled ahead on the backstretch before holding Dmitriev off at the finish.
Lavreysen also advanced without needing a deciding third race against Britain’s Jack Carlin. Lavreysen cruised to an easy win in their first race, then won a tense cat-and-mouse game to take their second race.
Earlier in the program, the women’s sprint began with the Olympic record falling three times in qualifying. Germany’s Lea Sophia Friedrich’s blistering time of 10.310 seconds over 200 meters equated to an average speed of 43.4 mph.
None of the medal contenders failed to advance to Saturday’s heats. That includes Friedrich, world champion Emma Hinze of Germany and Shanne Braspennincx, who won the Olympic gold medal in Thursday’s keirin.
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