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Elinor Barker and Neah Evans dug deep in the final laps of a frantic Madison to earn Olympic silver for Great Britain before Jack Carlin claimed bronze in a controversial sprint, with Dutch coaches complaining after his deciding race against Jeffrey Hoogland was restarted following a collision.
A late charge from Barker saw Britain win the last of the 12 sprints in the 120-lap Madison and move above the Netherlands as Italy’s Chiara Consonni and Vittoria Guazzini celebrated gold, finishing with 37 points to Team GB’s 31 and 28 for the Dutch.
For Barker it was a second medal of the week following team pursuit bronze on Wednesday. For Evans, it was a remarkable turnaround after the Epstein-Barr virus left her barely able to climb the stairs just a few months ago.
The 34-year-old admitted she had endured a “s***” 18 months coming into the Games, hit by two major crashes – ripping her hip flexor and injuring her back – before illness struck.
“At the end of April I ended up with EBV, a bacterial infection, that properly floored me,” Evans said.
“The training plan was out the window. Honestly if at that point someone said ‘you will go to the Olympics and get a silver medal’ I’d have been like, ‘Not a chance’.
“I remember trying to walk up a flight of stair and getting halfway up and thinking ‘I can’t get up these stairs’…It was quite scary. I’m delighted to come away with silver.”
There was a sense Team GB’s hopes of retaining a title that Dame Laura Kenny and Katie Archibald won on the Madison’s Olympic debut in the women’s programme three years ago suffered a major blow when Archibald was ruled out of these Games through injury in June.
But in Barker and Evans they had the reigning world champions, victorious in Glasgow 12 months ago, ready to take the race on aggressively.
No team took more points from the sprints, but what Barker and Evans had not counted on was both Italy and the Netherlands gaining a lap on the the field to earn 20 points.
“It took us a little bit by surprise that two teams got a lap and as early as they did,” Barker said. “We worked our plan off trends in the racing in the last eight years and it was a little bit unexpected but fair play to the teams that took one and went for something outside the normal.
“We really, really wanted gold. We came in as world champions which obviously meant we put that pressure on ourselves. We had a target on our back potentially.”
Carlin, who fractured his ankle in April, eventually prevailed for his second medal of the week, but only after two days of scrappy racing and some finger-pointing from his Dutch rivals, with some boos when he stepped on to the podium.
“I won’t lie – the last two days have probably been the most mentally challenging of my career,” said the 27-year-old Carlin, who was emotional after his victory.
The Scot, already racing on a warning after his tetchy quarter-final with Kaiya Ota on Thursday, raised his hand in apology after veering up the track and into Dutchman Hoogland in the decider of their best-of-three battle.
The commissaires decided a restart was sufficient and Carlin prevailed, but the Dutch were again unhappy, claiming Carlin came out of the sprinter’s lane in an illegal move.
Mehdi Kordi, the British coach who works with the Dutch sprinters, remonstrated with officials and said he was “very disappointed” with their decisions.
“I’d spoken to them before about what happened with (Carlin) yesterday, the rugby on wheels,” he said.
“There was headbutting and elbows yesterday. Jack is a worthy medal winner, but with both the incidents that happened today, I was surprised nothing was done. It was quite bizarre.”
