Tokyo Olympics: Team GB’s Matt Walls wins omnium cycling gold
Team GB’s Matt Walls has won track cycling gold in the men’s omnium at the Tokyo Olympics.
Its Team GB’s first title in the velodrome of these Games – and the 50th medal at the Tokyo Olympics overall – and 16th gold medal.
Walls led the standings ahead of the Netherlands’ Jan-Willem van Schip and France’s Benjamin Thomas going into the fourth and final race of the event.
Walls is the European champion and a bronze medalist at the 2020 world championship. He won the opener on Thursday and closed down an initial four-man attack which included Denmark’s Niklas Larsen and produced a surging finish to take 40 points in the scratch race.
He gained 36 points from the tempo race to put himself level on points with two other riders at the top of the field on 76 points.
Another strong performance saw him finishing second in the elimination race to move top of the leaderboard ahead of the final 100-lap points race.
“I managed to get a good lead coming to the end. It’s been a hard day. I came into that points race with a bit of a lead which was nice, it gave me a bit of breathing room,” he told the BBC.
“Thank you to all my family and friends, I wouldn’t be here without them. Especially my parents when I was younger growing up, they travelled around the country with me and there’s no chance I’d be here without them.”
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