On the final day of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, reigning Olympic champion Jennifer Valente (USA) maintained her focus throughout the four-race women’s Omnium, securing the gold medal once again.
Valente’s gold is her fifth Olympic medal overall, earned across three Games, and her second gold from Paris. She previously won a silver in team pursuit at the Rio 2016 Olympics and both a silver and gold at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
“There's nothing better than this and I'm super, super pleased and excited about this,” Valente said.
“I think each Olympic medal is approached as its own entity and you target a race and you do what you can to prepare and that is often either a whole quad, it's a four-year process or even an eight-year process or a whole career process. And so picking events and focusing on those and really targeting what you're trying to accomplish.”
“Each Olympic medal is its own process and its own journey.”
The strategy on the final day of racing at the Olympics was to stay calm in the hot velodrome.
“Staying cool, not overheating was a big one, but as far as racing goes, taking each race as a stand-alone basically and really kind of come out swinging for each one and then reset for the next race,” said Valente.
After placing first in the scratch race and second in the tempo race, Valente led the entire Elimination race, picking off competitors one by one. By finishing first in the third event, she added 40 points to her total, extending her lead to 10 points over Australia’s Georgia Baker.
The American rider knew that anything could happen in the chaotic final race, the points race.
“An Omnium is certainly not over until it's all the way over and bunch racing can be so unpredictable and a lot of things can happen, there can be crashes, people can take a late lap, and every time there are points the leaderboard reshuffles a little bit,” she said. “So you have to continue to evaluate what's happening.”
After earning five points in the first sprint of the points race, Valente closely monitored Baker, who was narrowing the gap. With under 50 laps to go, several riders lapped the field, each gaining 20 points. Sensing the urgency, Valente made a decisive move to join them, successfully lapping the field and adding 20 crucial points to her total. Valente clinched the Olympic title with 144 points.
While both Daria Pikulik (Poland) and Ally Wollaston (New Zealand) competing on the road with Women’s WorldTour teams, Valente views herself primarily as a track racer.
“I'm a track racer before I’m anything else where a lot of my competitors I think are road racers or cyclocross or mountain bikers or wherever they come from and across disciplines a lot," she said.
“The track is so unique, it's so fast, it’s so many things happening and the feeling that you get, going as hard as you can into a bend and you can feel yourself being pushed against the track, you can feel the speed and, and everything, that’s probably what I love the most – just riding the track and racing the track.”
When asked if she planned to compete at the 2028 Los Angeles games, Valente replied: "I think I'm going to try and rush to get to the closing ceremony right now. That's the only thing I'm thinking about."
