Elinor Barker Becomes Wales’ Greatest Female Olympian With Fourth Medal

Silver medalist Neah Evans and Elinor Barker of Team Great Britain. (Photo by Tim de Waele/Getty Images)

Elinor Barker Becomes Wales’ Greatest Female Olympian With Fourth Medal

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sportswales

By Hannah Blackwell

Elinor Barker has voiced her pride at becoming Wales’ most decorated female athlete with her fourth Olympic medal.

The 29-year-old Cardiff rider won silver along with teammate Neah Evans in the women’s madison.

It means Barker now owns more Olympic metal than any other Welsh woman.

This silver in Paris was added to her bronze in the women’s team pursuit to give her a 2024 double.

Her tally began with gold in the team pursuit in Rio in 2016, followed by silver in the same event at Tokyo 2020.

“We really, really wanted gold,” said Barker.

“We came in as world champions which obviously meant we put that pressure on ourselves. We had a target on our back potentially.

“We said it wouldn’t change the way that we raced but it was hard not to feel like we needed to take responsibility for things at times and perhaps that’s what we’ll pick up in our analysis but also I think – an Olympic medal.

“There are plenty of world champions this week that haven’t medalled. I think every single medal is a huge achievement.”

For Barker’s teammate Evans, there were times this year when she could not walk up the stairs, let alone envisage winning an Olympic medal.

Yet at the end of a gruelling and chaotic 30km, 120-lap madison, she and Barker charged home to a super silver that made a hellish 18 months more than worth it.

At 34, this is almost certainly Evans’ last Olympics and she had no shame in showing those emotions after going through the ringer just to make the start line.

Eighteen months ago, the Langbank cyclist crashed heavily while riding and damaged her hip flexor, while in April this year she contracted Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) and that led to a bacterial infection.

Evans feared her Olympics were over before they had even began, especially when she had to take breaks while trying to walk upstairs.

“The past 18 months have been really bad for me, if I am honest,” she explained, “There have been several times when I have sat there and thought I am not going to make it. The bacterial infection, it totally floored me.

“My plan went out of the window and I just tried to get over that and see what I could do. Honestly, at that point if you said I would go to an Olympics and win a silver medal, I would have said no chance.

“There were times when I was walking up the stairs, and halfway up I thought I can’t get up there. As an athlete, you downplay these things but this was almost quite scary.

“With injuries, you can’t rush them but you can get around it, whereas with this I just had to recover. I am delighted to come away with silver and we had a really great battle.”

Battle is without the doubt the word – off the track, and on. A madison is one of the great spectacles of any Olympics, but also one of the most chaotic.

Fifteen teams of two riders race around for 120 laps, while teammates switch between racing and resting. They rotate every few laps, as they jostle for position ahead of the 13 short sprints that earn points.

Keeping up with it is next to impossible – and the most impressive person in the whole race is the spotter who points to the rider in the lead each lap.

Evans and Barker may be the reigning world champions but, given the context of Evans’ build-up, arrived here as fringe medal contenders.

Yet they led for the first third of the race, until the Netherlands and then eventual champions Italy lapped the field – which earns a game-changing 20 points.

It appeared Britain would win bronze, until Barker pulled out a phenomenal last lap to win the last sprint – worth 10 points – and catapult them to silver.

“We have done a huge amount of race analysis and it is very rare in the women’s madison that team laps you like that,” Evans added, “But tonight it happened twice, including to the Dutch, and it is super rare.

“I have loved the process of getting here. We wanted to come away with gold and we thought we were capable of it, but I think the madison is so chaotic that even staying up and finishing is an achievement.

“It is never guaranteed. It is nice to do it with my teammates who have worked hard with and share this with.”

Aldi are proud Official Partners of Team GB & ParalympicsGB, supporting all athletes through to Paris 2024.

sportswales

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