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Top Lima Pan Am Games cycling performances you missed while you were on vacation

Kelsey Marie Mitchell sets Pan Am track cycling record in sprint qualifying

August 10, 2019
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While you might have been vacationing in the first third of August, the 18th Pan American Games in Lima, Peru aw Canada earn five cycling medals. The Pan Am Games ended on Sunday, and Canada was third in the medal count with 152.

The action in the velodrome began with the women’s team sprint on August 1. Kelsey Marie Mitchell and Amelia Walsh came second in qualifying and then grabbed silver when they couldn’t quite top the Mexicans. Mitchell would place fifth in the keirin the next day but her great triumph would come on the last day.

Keeping with Canada’s tradition of strong women’s team pursuit squads, Canada earned a silver. In qualifying Maggie Coles Lyster, Erin Attwell, Miriam Brouwer and Laurie Jussaume beat Mexico with a time of 4:29.145. In the final the foursome met the best qualifying quartet from the U.S.A. (4:27.799).

The final day on the boards, August 4, the team produced two medals: Maggie Coles Lyster and Brouwer’s silver in the hand-slinging madison, and Mitchell’s impressive gold in the individual sprint. Mitchell set a Pan American Games record in qualifying of 10.890 in the flying 200 metres before outpowering Martha Bayona Pineda of Colombia in the gold medal final.

But there was another medal in the road cycling discipline: Jussaume’s bronze in the individual time trial. Jussaume’s 26:27.15 was 2:50.15 slower than American Chloe Dygert, who won this year’s Joe Martin Stage Race for Sho Air-Twenty20. Brouwer was top Canadian in the road race at 19th.

Canada’s best results in the BMX races came from James Palmer, who was fifth in the men’s race and Drew Mechielsen, seventh in the women’s competition. On the final day of competition, Canadian Jaden Chipman placed 7th in the men’s BMX freestyle.