Canadian men edged out of medal round at track cycling world cup

Jay Lamoureux of Victoria and his Canadian men’s team pursuit mates discovered Saturday just how tough international sport can be at the top level.

Canada placed fifth and just missed qualifying for the medal round, by three/10ths of a second, despite setting a Canadian national record at the UCI Track Cycling World Cup at the Pan Am Games Velodrome in Milton, Ont.

The Canadian team of Lamoureux, Aidan Caves of Vancouver, Derek Gee of Ottawa and Michael Foley of Toronto clocked three minutes, 56.35 seconds but were pipped by Great Britain for the fourth and final berth into the medal round.

“It’s hard to miss the medal round by such a slim margin,” Lamoureux said in a statement.

But he looked at it as another building block: “We set another Canadian record, so I think everyone’s pretty happy. We are working on the more technical aspects and being faster in the last kilometre, and I think it’s helped us go a lot faster.”

Lamoureux and his Canadian mates won the bronze medal in April at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia, and are certainly now eyeing the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics.

The 23-year-old Lamoureux ran middle-distance track and crosscountry at Oak Bay Secondary before switching to cycling on the 1994 Victoria Commonwealth Games Velodrome, now known as the Westshore Velodrome.

Lamoureux is continuing a record of success for the Colwood facility, which was almost shuttered, before the Island cycling community rallied to save it. Lamoureux is the latest international track cyclist to come out of the Westshore Velodrome, following 2012 London Olympic bronze-medallist Gillian Carleton of Victoria and 2015 Toronto Pan American Games gold-medallist Evan Carey of Oak Bay.

Lamoureux, a well-rounded individual who played in the Oak Bay jazz band, is now is centralized with the national track cycling team in Milton.