Wood and Stewart miss out in crash-strewn madison

Ollie Wood and Mark Stewart missed out on adding another cycling medal to Great Britain’s collection as Portugal won a historic first Olympic gold on the track in the men’s madison.

The British pair – current world silver medallists – finished 10th. They picked up 11 points on the sprints but were lapped after Wood was brought down by the Netherlands’ Jan Willem van Schip in one of several crashes.

Stewart was a late replacement for Ethan Hayter, who withdrew with a thigh strain suffered during Wednesday’s silver medal-winning team pursuit.

“I feel like I have been rear-ended by a lorry,” Wood, 28, told BBC Sport. “The biggest rider on the track hit me from behind.

“There were quite a few crashes in that segment of the race. I think everyone was so on their limit, cognitive function starts to go at that point.”

Stewart, also 28, said: “It’s the Olympics; if there is anything we learned from the five days leading into this, it was going to be the hardest madison anyone has experienced.

“We were ready for it. At the end of the day we just lacked that little bit physically.”

An inspired performance over the 200 laps from Iuri Leitao and Rui Oliveira, including a blistering final sprint to win double points, saw them become Portugal’s first Olympic champions in Paris.

They finished on 55 points, eight points ahead of Italy who took silver. Bronze went to Denmark on 41.

But it was a race marred by several high-speed crashes, in addition to Woods’ collision, with Spain’s Albert Torres Barcelo stopped from returning to racing after banging his head on the boards in a crash.

Italians Simone Consonni and Elia Viviani looked set to take the win, but after Consonni hit the deck, they could not respond to Portugal’s late surge. Consonni’s sister, Chiara Consonni, won gold in the women’s madison on Friday.

Newly triumphant Portugal had never won a medal in track cycling before Leitao’s silver in the omnium on Thursday.

Elsewhere in Saturday’s action at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines velodrome, Britain’s Emma Finucane reached the semi-finals of the women’s individual sprint – the event in which she is the world champion. She will face New Zealand’s newly crowned keirin champion Ellesse Andrews.

Sophie Capewell, who won team sprint gold alongside Finucane and Katy Marchant on Monday, exited in the quarter-finals.

In the men’s keirin, both Jack Carlin and Hamish Turnbull progressed to the quarter-finals, though Turnbull had to go through the repechages.

There was concern in the final repechage when Trinidad and Tobago’s Kwesi Browne had to be carried off the track on a stretcher after a heavy crash to the floor.

The sprint and keirin competitions will conclude on Sunday, the final day of the 2024 Olympics.

For Finucane and Carlin, it represents the opportunity for a third Olympic medal, with Finucane having also won keirin bronze in addition to the team sprint gold, while Carlin won team sprint silver and individual bronze.

Women’s madison silver medallist Neah Evans will also return to the boards on Sunday in the omnium, where riders contest four events – the scratch, tempo, elimination and points races.

Great Britain have won seven medals so far at the velodrome – equal to their haul from the Tokyo Olympics three years ago.