MILTON, Ont. — Kelsey Mitchell continued to shine on the fourth and final day of the Tissot UCI Track Nations Cup, this time claiming gold in the Keirin for the first time in her career while teammate and Olympic Keirin bronze medallist Lauriane Genest had a minor crash that prevented her from finishing the race.
The two sprinters, who won bronze in the Team Sprint earlier this week, finished in the top three in rounds 1 and 2 to qualify for the gold-medal final on Sunday.
Mitchell took off with two laps to go, taking a solid advance on the stacked field of riders. In the final lap, Lauriane Genest got caught in a crash with Steffie van der Peet of the Netherlands and Yuka Kobashi of Japan, all three riders losing their shot at the podium. Mitchell went on to win the sprint and took home the gold medal ahead of Mina Sato of Japan, while World Champion Lea Sophie Friedrich of Germany was relegated.
“I’m really happy with what I did – I like going to the front because it’s safer up there and usually my legs will hold on,” said Mitchell. “I wanted to go in there and do my best, and that’s what I did. I was happy to make it through qualifying and not have to do a repechage. It was a close one in the semis, I barely got through but qualified for the final and left it all out there. It’s so nice to be on your home track, I train here almost every single day and then looking up and seeing my friends and family was very special.”
In the Sprint event, Olympian Nick Wammes and Ryan Dodyk both clocked fast times in the qualifying race, finishing with the sixth and seventh best times respectively and Dodyk setting a personal best clocking in at 9.717 seconds.
After four days of racing, Canada concludes the event with a total of three medals – bronze in the Team Sprint (Kelsey Mitchell, Lauriane Genest, Sarah Orban, Jackie Boyle), silver in the Sprint (Mitchell) and gold in the Keirin (Mitchell).
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 15, 2022
