The Paris 2024 Olympics track cycling events started with the women’s team sprint on Monday, with the world record being broken five times and Great Britain coming away with the first gold medal ahead of New Zealand and Germany.
At the other end of the results sheet were the Canadian team, who were not as competitive as they might have liked despite having defending Olympic sprint champion Kelsey Mitchell and Tokyo keirin bronze medallist Lauriane Genest in their ranks.
Mitchell explained that the team’s focus is on the individual sprint and keirin, adding that they have yet to fully adapt to the new three-rider team sprint, an event which has made its debut in the Paris Olympics as part of the push for gender parity.
“Having women do 750 meters is completely different than what we’ve been doing before. It’s incredible to see the women going this fast with world record after world record. It’s just going to keep getting faster, so we either need to step up or step down, I guess,” Mitchell told the assembled media after the finals on Monday.
“We got to start the Olympics off, that was cool. And we got to set the Olympic record because there was never three before in the team sprint so it was cool to start it off. Obviously, we’ll go on to better results.
“We came here for medals, and we knew we weren’t quite there with team sprint so we went out there and gave our best. Our best just isn’t quite there yet. We’re top eight in the world, which is good, but obviously, we want to be on that top step or at least on a step.
“Sprinting here is kind of where our focus is, and hopefully we can use the momentum and our legs will be feeling good in the next competition.”
Canada were the only team to have riders change positions between rounds, with Mitchell riding in the last position in qualifying before settling on second position for the first and final rounds.
“I tried to do P3 in the first round, but obviously, we’re a little bit better with me as P2 and [Genest] as P3. So we’ll just keep working on it and hopefully, we can be more competitive with the rest of the field in the future.”
The switch helped to make the Canadian trio’s time 0.762 seconds quicker – a massive margin of improvement but not enough to move them into the medal finals.
Mitchell looked on the bright side, noting the team are still the eighth best in the world and with room to improve.
“We did a PB so that’s exciting,” Mitchell said. “We’re just seeing the other teams are flying. We definitely need to work on our team sprint if that’s the priority. I think our legs felt pretty good – Sarah gave us a good start, I had a decent P2 time and [Genest] held the speed. We just have a long way to go to be competitive with the rest of the world.”
Asked what they could change to be more competitive, Mitchell said, “Our team dynamics need to be better. We need to do it for each other not individually.
“Right now, me and Lau don’t focus too much on our starts. So definitely that’s a weak link for us – getting on Sarah, who’s doing a decent P1 time, is tough for us. It takes a lot out. So there’s a lot we can work on. We’re definitely not at our best, which is exciting. We knew we wouldn’t be there for Paris. So hopefully for LA [the 2028 Olympics].”
