Romero wins women’s individual pursuit
It was Britain’s fourth gold of the five events decided so far at the Laoshan Velodrome.
Lesya Kalitovska of Ukraine took the bronze.
Not long ago, neither Romero nor Houvenaghel had ever sat on a racing bike.
Houvenaghel, a dental surgeon from Northern Ireland, only took up cycling at the age of 27 to keep her husband company on his training rides. She was soon outracing him.
Romero is an Olympic silver medalist in rowing, but decided two years ago that she wanted a new challenge, so she traveled to Britain’s national cycling center in Manchester to have a go at track racing. She was an immediate success, taking the silver medal in the 2007 world championships and then in March of this year becoming world champion.
Britain is targeting as many as eight of the 10 golds available in track cycling, to add to the gold and silver taken by British women in road racing. They also have strong hopes of gold in the women’s BMX competition.
If all goes to plan, Britain could win more gold medals in cycling at these games than it did in all sports combined at the Athens Olympics.
In the qualifying round of the men’s team pursuit, which concludes Monday, Britain posted a time within a second of the world record that the same team set at the world championships in March.
The other favourites for the competition, Denmark and Australia, also qualified without difficulty for the first round later on Sunday.
In the qualifying for the sprint medals, British riders broke the Olympic records for both men and women in the flying 200 meters.
World champion Victoria Pendleton completed the course in 10.863 seconds, coming within .3 of beating the world record that has stood for 15 years. Four riders came inside the previous Olympic record, set in 1996.
Pendleton’s compatriot, Chris Hoy, was even closer to the world record, setting a time of 9.815 seconds, just .043 seconds short of the time set by Theo Bos of the Netherlands in Moscow in 2006. Hoy already has two gold medals in this competition.
The second British rider, Jason Kenny, was the only other rider to record a time of less than 10 seconds.
Bos, the silver medalist from Athens and four-time sprint world champion, was disappointed with his time of 10.318 – the ninth fastest – and said he saw no way back to the podium.
“They were good and I was bad. It’s my worst race this year,” he said.
The Dutch have been a powerhouse in track cycling for years, but they have yet to take a medal of any colour at these games.
“It’s the worst year ever. I don’t know why,” Bos said.
To add to the Dutch woes, team pursuit rider Niki Terpstra crashed while riding from the athletes’ village to the velodrome and broke his arm.
Second reserve rider Jens Mouris was called into the team by coach Peter Pieters.
“I was lying in bed when Peter phoned me and asked if I could ride,” Mouris said.
Despite that, the Dutch set a time of 4 minutes, 4.806 seconds, the sixth-best time and better than they managed at the world championships.
The Dutch team appears to be accident-prone. Pieters was also briefly hospitalized earlier in the games after another of the team pursuit riders, Levi Heimans, hit the wheel of the rider in front of him, lost control of his bike, and crashed into Pieters.