Canadians Genest and Mitchell both win first rounds of women’s sprint races

Just one day after her bronze medal in the keirin, Canadian Lauriane Genest lined up for the women’s sprint event. Fellow Canadian Kelsey Mitchell, who won gold in the event at the 2019 Pan Ams, also kicked off the first day of women’s sprint rounds.

Both Canadians performed well, winning both their races and moving on easily to the 1/8 final.

RELATED: Lauriane Genest wins bronze in women’s keirin, Canada’s first cycling medal at the Tokyo Olympics

New records

The individual sprint race starts with 200m time trials that set up the brackets of qualified riders. The women came into the event hitting some extremely fast speeds—the top 17 of 29 riders all rode faster than the previous Olympic record of 10.721, set in 2016 by British rider Rebecca James. Mitchell, the current world record holder in the women’s 200m flying start (10.154), finished second in the qualifying with a time of 10.346, just 0.036 slower than the new Olympic record holder Lea Sophie Friedrich (Germany.)

Lauriane Genest

Coming off her bronze medal win, Genest placed fifth in the qualifying, with a time of 10.460.

1/32 final

The qualifying rounds are followed by knockout heats which pit two riders against each other. The extremely strategic cat-and-mouse-style three-lap races involve riders trying to balance conserving energy to beat the other rider in a sprint while attempting to position themselves ideally.

As they placed highly in the qualifying round, Mitchell and Genest were matched with some of the slowest qualifying riders, which made for easy wins in the first of the knockout rounds (1/32 finals.)

Canadian Lauriane Genest beat American Madalyn Godby

Mitchell easily breezed past Ukrainian rider Lyubov Basova in her 1/32 final heat. Genest also managed to hold off American Madalyn Godby, sending her to the repechage where she got another chance to move on to the next final.

1/16 final

In the 1/16 final Mitchell was matched with Australian cyclist Kaarle McCulloch. Although McCulloch performed well tactically, in the end, she wasn’t able to match Mitchell’s power. Mitchell moved on to the 1/8 final.

Genest was matched with ROC athlete Anastasiia Voinova in a tight race. The experienced Russian cyclist didn’t let the race get decided early, but Genest was able to come out on top, also moving on to the 1/8 final without having to move to the repechage rounds.

The Canadian women will compete on Saturday at 2:30 a.m. EDT/ Friday at 11:30 p.m. PDT.