Walls bronze saves day for Britain
Oldham 21-year-old shows grit in surprise medal win Evans crash ends GB hopes in the women’s Madison
Just when it looked as if Britain were going to end another day emptyhanded, inspiration arrived in the unlikely shape of a 21-year-old from Oldham.
Matt Walls produced a superb performance in the men’s omnium last night to claim world championship bronze and rescue what had been until that point another frustrating day for the British squad.
After Laura Kenny’s crash on Friday left her with four stitches in her face and 12th place overall in the omnium, in which she has won the last two Olympic titles, so GB medal chances looked set to be ruined by a spill yesterday with Neah Evans’s crash 20 laps from the end of the women’s Madison effectively ending any chance of her and Elinor Barker winning a medal.
The pair were only five points off the podium at the time in what is track cycling’s most chaotic, entertaining race, which sees pairs of riders handslinging their way around the velodrome trying to complete the most laps and win intermediate sprint points.
Evans collided with the American pair just as they came together for a handsling 20 laps from the finish, the British rider holding her hands up afterwards. “There was a change but I didn’t see it until the last minute,” she admitted. “By then I’d committed to coming over with a lot of speed and I hoped to be able to push them off a little bit but … yeah, it was kind of carnage [but] the crash was partly my fault.”
They finished sixth but it was another opportunity missed for a squad enduring a difficult week in terms of medals won. Silvers in the men’s team sprint and the women’s team pursuit were all they had to show for their efforts until Walls’ heroics as Jason Kenny and Jack Carlin also missed out in the men’s sprint yesterday. Carlin exited in the last 32 and Kenny the last 16.
And while there have been mitigating factors – Kenny was riding with a broken shoulder before she crashed in her omnium, Carlin was carrying a nasty ankle injury yesterday following a collision in the keirin earlier in the week – there are also concerns, particularly in the men’s team pursuit.
Which made Walls’ omnium bronze all the more satisfying. The youngster had gone into the final points race in fifth overall after finishing second, seventh and 11th in the scratch race, the tempo and the elimination race respectively. But he looked to be out of medal contention until an inspired decision to follow Cameron Meyer’s wheel just as the Australian decided he was going to lap the field.
“I had to do something,” Walls said. “I’d picked up some points in the sprints. I knew I wanted to make the jump. I had to get a lap somehow.
“Luckily Cam was going and I jumped on with him and he pretty much dragged me round for the lap.”
This is only Walls’ second world championships but he is showing a useful ability to perform on the big stage. He finished sixth in the scratch last year, improved to fourth this year, and now has his first world championship medal. “I just keep improving, learning from mistakes and coming back stronger,” he said.
It was an interesting result because the omnium, as opposed to the scratch, is an Olympic discipline. Ethan Hayter, the man described recently by Ed Clancy as British Cycling’s “Chosen One”, is still the heavy favourite to get the spot. But this result may give the selectors pause for thought.
“It puts me in a good place but we’ve got a few riders in the team that are unbelievably strong as well,” Walls replied when the Tokyo question was put to him. “It’s going to be tough making selection but I just have to wait and see.”
Selection is going to be tricky in the women’s Madison, too, with last night’s crash not helping to clarify the picture. Katie Archibald and Laura Kenny, once she recovers, also have designs on a Madison spot as well as their bread and butter: the team pursuit.
Barker admitted they would all be sweating on selection. “I have no idea,” she said. “It’s very subjective. It’s not team pursuit. There are no graphs. No specific power data to go off. There is nothing to say someone else would have done any differently in any given situation. I have absolutely no idea.”
Barker added the way the Madison was raced – the Dutch pair of Kirsten Wild and Amy Pieters eventually pulled off the win without ever taking a lap – also caught them by surprise.
“We had literally planned for sprints and we planned for how we would win them,” she said. “Big bunch sprints, not a splintered drag racing situation.”
One thing is for sure, standards across the board are rising. At almost exactly the same time as Barker and Evans were speaking, American Chloe Dygert, who led the United States to gold in the team pursuit on Thursday, was picking up her second gold in the individual pursuit having smashed the world record twice in a day.
Today’s final events may offer the chance of another medal or two with Katy Marchant going in the keirin and Hayter and Ollie Wood in the men’s Madison.