Emily Kay secured bronze in the Women’s Omnium event at the UCI Track Cycling World Cup in Milton, Canada.
Emily was in fantastic form throughout the four rounds of the event, finishing 5th (32 points) in the Scratch race, 1st (40 points) in the Tempo, 8th (26 points) in the Elimination and 9th (4 points) in the Points race for a total of 102 points.
Kay recently made her debut for Ireland back in November 2019 after making the switch from Team GB. She won gold at the Junior Worlds in 2013 and also holds two World Cup golds which she won in the Team Pursuit and Omnium events back in 2016.
The Women’s Omnium was won by Jennifer Valente of the USA on 134 points with Letizia Paternoster of Italy claiming Silver on 114 points.
The women’s omnium race is the pentathlon of cycling. It is a pure endurance event consisting of four-disciplines.
Each competitor rides in four events – the scratch race, the tempo race, the elimination race and the points race - all of which must be completed.
In the scratch race, tempo race and elimination race, the winner of each event gets 40 points, with the second placed rider getting 38, third placed earning 36 points, and so on.
The final event of the omnium race is the points race. Riders carry their points total from the first three events into the points race, where any points won or lost are added, or removed, from the total score. The omnium winner is the rider with the most points after four events.
The result capped a strong showing for Ireland’s Track Cycling squad at the World Cup event.
The Women’s Madison pairing of Shannon McCurley and Emily Kay further improved Ireland’s chances of securing a place on the start line in Tokyo, their 7th place ensuring they remain inside the Olympic qualification zone.
For Olympic qualification, a 20-month period is used to build ranking points at World Cups and other international events. The World Championships are the final opportunity for countries to qualify for the Tokyo Games in the six different disciplines.
The squad will now turn their attention to the UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Berlin from February 26th to March 1st.
In the Team Pursuit, Alice Sharpe, Kelly Murphy, Lara Gillespie and Emily Kay covered the 4k distance in a time of 4:26.389. This wasn’t enough to qualify for them for the final and saw them finish fifth overall.
Elsewhere, Robyn Stewart finished 17th in the Women’s Sprint and 10th in the Women’s Keirin.
