IZU, Japan — Jason Kenny became Britain’s most decorated Olympian on Sunday when he defended his keirin title on the final day of track cycling at the Tokyo Games, breaking a tie with Chris Hoy with his seventh gold medal and a stalemate with Bradley Wiggins with his ninth overall.
Jennifer Valente gave the hard-luck American cycling team a gold medal when she got up from a crash in the omnium-ending points race to hang on to her lead, while Kelsey Mitchell scored gold for Canada in the women’s sprint.
The focus in the velodrome was on Kenny, though. He had come out of retirement for the Tokyo Games but had been lamenting his form, especially after he missed out on a medal entirely in the men’s sprint.
After winning his semifinal race Sunday, Kenny slotted in behind the motorized pacing bike for the first three laps of the finals. He began his sprint the moment the derny ducked off the track, and nobody seemed willing to react to his audacious flyer. That left him all alone with a near-quarter lap lead all the way to the finish line.
The rest of the field was left sprinting for the runner-up medals, and Azizulhasni Awang of Malaysia beat Olympic sprint champion Harrie Lavreysen of the Netherlands with a bike throw at the line to take silver.
It was a less successful day for Kenny’s wife, Laura, who was favored for omnium gold after taking the multidiscipline event the first two times it was contested in the Olympics. Kenny won the women’s Madison with Katie Archibald earlier in the Tokyo Games, and she had added a team pursuit silver medal to her previous two golds.
Yet what could be her final day in an Olympic velodrome began in the worst way possible.
Italian rider Elisa Balsamo hit Emily Kay of Ireland as they began the final lap of the scratch race, the first event of the omnium, triggering a massive front-stretch pile-up that brought down seven riders — Kenny among them.
With the riders and their bikes tangled in a heap on the track apron, Valente seized the opportunity and outsprinted Yumi Kajihara and Annette Edmondson to win the race for maximum points.
Kenny took seven points to win the tempo race but, more importantly, Edmondson and several other contenders lost 20 points when Valente and Co. went on the attack and caused them to lose a lap.
Kenny’s medal hopes were — fittingly — eliminated in the elimination race, where she was the seventh rider out. Kajihara finished second behind Clara Copponi of France to move within two points of Valente with only the points race left.
In the final race of the entire Olympic cycling program, Valente won the first sprint to pad her lead, then got up from a crash with 30 laps left to keep from losing any ground on her pursuers. She wound up taking second in the final sprint to secure the gold medal — then broke down into tears when she got off her bike.
Kajihara took silver for Japan. Kirsten Wild earned bronze for the Netherlands.
The women’s sprint figured to be a showdown between Emma Hinze, last year’s world champion from Germany, and Wai Sze Lee, the 2019 world champion from South Korea. Both cruised through their quarterfinals and into Sunday’s races.
So much for that.
Starikova, who had already upset reigning bronze medalist Katy Marchant to reach the semifinals, swept past Lee in their match. And Mitchell, who beat Lauriane Genest in their all-Canada quarterfinal, beat Hinze in their best-of-three decider.
Mitchell led wire-to-wire against Starikova in the first of their best-of-three final. Then, she held Starikova off in a drag race to the finish to win Canada’s second gold in the event after Lori-Ann Muenzer’s at the 2004 Athens Games.
Lee easily swept through Hinze to win the bronze medal.
“The past year and a half has been very up and down with the postponement of the Olympics and not being able to race,” Mitchell said, “but I have incredible teammates, an incredible coach, staff around me. Everyone is so supportive, and all my friends and family back home. I knew all the hard work would pay off.”
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