The track cycling events at the Paris Olympics begin on Monday, August 5 and run all the way until Sunday, August 11, with the medals in the women’s sprint being one of the final sets decided at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome outside Paris.
Qualifying will get underway for the 34 entrants on Friday, August 9, with the fastest 24 times in a 200m flying lap time trial heading into successive rounds of the well-known three-lap match sprints, where the field will be reduced down in the 1/32 and 1/16 finals and repechages.
In the 1/32 phase, the top seeds will face the bottom seeds - first against 24th, second against 23rd and so on, before the losers play out the repechage races in threes to decide the 16 riders who go through. This process repeats in the 1/16 and 1/8 rounds.
The competition will resume on Saturday, August 10, for the 1/8 finals and repechages, where the field will be reduced to just the top eight riders to face off in four quarterfinals, with the best of three match sprint rounds resuming.
The semi-finals and medal finals will follow on the final day of track competition, where the gold medal and Olympic Champion will be decided after a thrilling afternoon of action on the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines boards.
The fight for gold should see the most powerful and explosive women’s cyclists on the planet battle out for the top spot, with big stares on the start line, track stands, and should-to-shoulder racing all commonplace in one of Track’s most exciting events.
Having been introduced to the Olympics as the first-ever women’s Track cycling event in Seoul 1988, it’ll be the 10th appearance of the individual sprint at the Games.
Women's sprint competitors
- Kristina Clonan (Australia)
- Chloe Moran (Australia)
- Maeve Plouffe (Australia)
- Nicky Degrendele (Belgium)
- Julie Nicolaes (Belgium)
- Lauriane Genest (Canada)
- Kelsey Mitchell (Canada)
- Martha Bayona Pineda (Colombia)
- Stefany Lorena Cuadrado Florez (Colombia)
- Shahd Saaed Mohamed (Egypt)
- Mathilde Gros (France)
- Taky Marie Divine Kouame (France)
- Lea Sophie Friedrich (Germany)
- Pauline Sophie Grabosch (Germany)
- Emma Hinze (Germany)
- Sophie Capewell (Great Britain)
- Emma Finucane (Great Britain)
- Katy Marchant (Great Britain)
- Martina Fidanza (Italy)
- Sara Fiorin (Italy)
- Miriam Vece (Italy)
- Riyu Ohta (Japan)
- Mina Sato (Japan)
- Nurul Izzah Izzati Mohd Asri (Malaysia)
- Luz Daniela Gaxiola Gonzalez (Mexico)
- Yuli Paola Verdugo Osuna (Mexico)
- Hetty van de Wouw (Netherlands)
- Steffie van der Peet (Netherlands)
- Ellesse Andrews (New Zealand)
- Shaane Fulton (New Zealand)
- Shanju Bao (China)
- Liying Yuan (China)
- Marlena Karwacka (Poland)
- Nikola Sibiak (Poland)
Women's Sprint contenders
There have been eight different winners in the nine previous competitions, with the Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 200 champion Félicia Ballanger (France) the only rider to win it back-to-back.
Kelsey Mitchell (Canada) returns as the defending Olympic champion, but without her two fellow podium sitters from Tokyo, as neither Olena Starikova (Ukraine) nor Lee Wai Sze is on the entries list.
While Mitchell will be in the running to be the first back-to-back winner since Ballanger, she’s been knocked off of the top spot by a stacked German squad of sprint stars and a young British superstar.
Emma Finucane (Great Britain) is the young Brit who heads into Paris 2024 as the reigning World Champion from her home championships in Glasgow last year. Having added the European sprint title to her haul in Apeldoorn this past January, the Welsh rider arrives as the number 1 ranked rider and a huge hope for GB to win gold on Olympic debut.
The German trio of medal contenders consists of former World Champions Lea Sophie Friedrich and Emma Hinze, alongside Pauline Grabosch, who has five times been team sprint World Champion on teams containing Hinze and Grabosch.
Home French hopes will lie with 2022 sprint World Champion Mathilde Gros and former 500m time trial world champ Marie-Divine Kouamé.
Other nations who will be hopeful of a medal include New Zealand with reigning keirin World Champion Ellesse Andrews, who took bronze in the sprint event in Glasgow and Colombia with Martha Bayona, who is the fourth highest ranked sprinter in track sprinting.
Women's Sprint Schedule
- August 9: Qualifying - 14:00 CET
- August 9: 1/32 Finals & Repechages - 14:48 CET
- August 9: 1/16 Finals & Repechages - 19:10 CET
- August 10: 1/8 Finals & Repechages - 17:00 CET
- August 10: Quarterfinals - 19:07 CET
- August 11: Semifinals - 11:22 CET
- August 11: Finals - 12:45 CET
