Canadian track cyclist Maggie Coles-Lyster endures ‘bittersweet’ end to Olympic debut

Track cyclist Maggie Coles-Lyster didn’t add to Canada’s record medal haul at the Paris Olympics but managed a top-10 finish, placing ninth in women’s omnium on Sunday.

The 25-year-old from Maple Ridge, B.C., scored five in the points race, the last of the omnium’s four races after amassing 96 points over the scratch, tempo and elimination events at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome.

Coles-Lyster told CBC Sports it was a “bittersweet” ending to her first Olympics.

“I was really happy with my first three races. I was on cloud 9,” she said. “The omnium has come down to the best points-race riders and I didn’t quite have the legs to go with the laps that I needed to take to stay in contention [for a medal].”

Canada opened competition Sunday with 27 medals — nine gold, seven silver, 11 bronze — a national record for a non-boycotted Summer Games.

Coles-Lyster did put herself in medal contention with a third-place effort in the elimination in which the last-place rider is eliminated from the race every two laps. Entering the final race of the multi-discipline event, the Canadian was third with 96 points, 22 behind leader and eventual repeat gold medallist Jennifer Valente of the United States, who racked up 144 points overall.

Poland’s Daria Pikulik claimed the Olympic silver medal with 131 points, six more than bronze medallist Ally Wollaston of Great Britain who held off Lotte Kopecky of Belgium at the end of the 80-lap points race.

Coles-Lyster, who started in the sport when she was five years old, was second in the scratch race, the first event in the omnium, where riders try to cover 30 laps as quickly as possible.

Challenging format

She was 10th in tempo, where a point is awarded to the leader of each of the final 25 laps.

The omnium was introduced ahead of the 2012 Olympic Games in London for both men and women, replacing the individual pursuit, points race and kilometre time trial.

“This format is challenging because we have less than an hour between each event, so it gets mentally and physically fatiguing,” said Coles-Lyster, who collected two silver medals at the 2019 Pan Am Games and 2022 Commonwealth Games bronze.

“[In] the last [race] you try to be as observant as possible, try to keep track of the [scoreboard], who’s on what points and figure out who to mark. There’s a lot going on.”

I know what I have to do [going forward] and I feel this is going to be the first of many Olympics for me. I’ll be back.— Maggie Coles-Lyster, who is eyeing an Olympic return at Los Angeles 2028

At the start of this week, the Canadian women’s track pursuit team, of which Coles-Lyster is a member, was hit with a bacterial infection that laid the athletes low in the Olympic village.

After rounds of antibiotics, the Canadians made it to the start line of Tuesday’s race, qualified for Wednesday’s playoff round and later placed eighth.

“For a first Olympics it was quite the week,” understated Coles-Lyster. “There were some great moments and a fair amount of disappointment, but that’s bike racing.

“I know what I have do to [going forward] and I feel this is going to be the first of many Olympics for me, so I’ll be back [in Los Angeles in 2028].”

Valente made a dominant defence of omnium title, earning her second gold medal of the week and wrapping up the most successful Summer Games for the U.S. cycling team in 40 years.

Valente helped the Americans win gold in the team pursuit earlier in the week, along with Kristen Faulkner, who also won two gold medals after her road race triumph. In all, the U.S. team captured three gold medals and six in cycling events, its best haul since the team won four gold and nine medals at the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

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Other Canadian results Sunday:

• James Hedgcock (Ancaster, Ont.) — Placed sixth in opening heat of men’s keirin quarterfinals, didn’t advance.
• Nick Wammes (Bothwell, Ont.) — Finished sixth in second of three quarterfinal heats in men’s keirin, didn’t advance.
• Kelsey Mitchell (Sherwood Park, Alta.) — Reached the finish last in a race to determine the fifth-to-eighth-place athletes in women’s sprint.