Portugal holds off Italy and Denmark to win the Olympic gold medal in the men’s Madison

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MONTIGNY-LE-BRETONNEUX, France (AP) — Iúri Leitão felt sluggish after racing four times in a single day on his way to the silver medal in the Olympic omnium, and the Portuguese cyclist made that uncomfortable fact known to teammate Rui Oliveira early in the Madison, a chaotic 200-lap tag-team event that always seems to produce some drama.

It was Oliveira, who admitted later he had “never won a single race in my life,” who told his more accomplished partner to bide his time. Let the other teams wear themselves out. Just stay in the race until the right moment.

It came with about 40 laps to go Saturday night.

Leitão and Oliveira gained a lap on the field, earning 20 points, and won the final four sprints — the last worth double points — to surge past Italy and defending champion Denmark and capture Portugal’s first gold medal of the Paris Games.

“I was really fatigued after the omnium,” Leitão said amid the din of a packed Vélodrome National de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. “He said: ‘No worries. We will take it step by step. We will let them get fatigued, and in the end, we will have a word to say.’”

It was the first Olympic gold medal in track cycling for Portugal and just its fifth gold medal overall dating to the nation’s debut at the 1912 Stockholm Games. The rest of the gold medals have come from track and field events.

“I’ve had so many disappointments through all these years,” Oliveira said. “Our track (program in Portugal) is like, 14 years old. This is nothing compared with all these big nations. We’re not even close to being the favorites for this race.”

The Madison gets its name from the venue where it originated — Madison Square Garden in New York. It is an endurance race in which the leading four teams earn points in sprints every 10 laps, and they can earn a 20-point bonus for gaining laps on the rest of the field. One rider is considered in the race at a time, though they can tag in their partner at any point.

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Leitão and Oliveira led the Italians and Danes by two points entering the final sprint, and the bonus points there gave them 55 total. The Italian team of Simone Consonni and Elia Viviani finished with 47 points to earn the silver medal, while the Danish duo of Michael Mørkøv and Niklas Larsen wound up with 41 points to round out the podium.

“I saved the golden bullet for the last sprint,” Leitão said. “I knew if I could breathe a little bit the last 10 laps, I could go on the sprint against anyone. I was really confident. And Rui was very confident in me. But I have to be honest, in the last moments, I was just giving it all because of Rui. I was really, really empty, but I couldn’t let him down.”

Consonni picked up his second medal of the Paris Games after helping the Italians win bronze in the team pursuit. And it came one day after his sister, Chiara Consonni, teamed with Vittoria Guazzini to win the women’s Madison competition.

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Meanwhile, Mørkøv was left with bronze to go with the gold medal he won with Lasse Norman Hansen at the Tokyo Games.

“Tokyo gold was the highlight of my career, but to be here at the age of 39, finishing my career this year winning a medal with a relatively new partner, Niklas, also makes me very proud,” he said. “Until the race was finished, we were still fighting.”

The track cycling program Saturday at the Paris Games helped to set the stage for Sunday’s finale, when Jennifer Valente of the U.S. will try to defend her omnium title and medals will be decided in the women’s sprint and the men’s keirin.

In the women’s sprint, newly crowned Olympic keirin champion Ellesse Andrews of New Zealand swept through Emma Hinze of Germany and into the semifinals, where she will face Emma Finucane of Britain in a best-of-three showdown.

Finucane won both of her quarterfinal races over Martha Bayona of Colombia.

The other semifinal will feature Lea Friedrich of Germany, who swept past reigning Olympic sprint champion Kelsey Mitchell of Canada, and Dutch rider Hetty van de Wouw, who beat Sophie Capewell of Britain in consecutive races.

The first of the five men’s keirin heats became easier to survive when Azizulhasni Awang, the silver medalist in Tokyo, was disqualified. He overtook the motorized pace bike, called a derny, before it left the track to begin the three-lap sprint.

The rest of the favorites, including two-time Olympic sprint champion Harrie Lavreysen — the bronze medalist in the keirin from Tokyo — and his Dutch teammate Jeffrey Hoogland, made it through to Sunday’s quarterfinals without any problems.