TRIPLE SILVER FOR MITCHELL ON DAY THREE OF COMMONWEALTH GAMES
Birmingham, UK (July 31, 2021) – Kelsey Mitchell clocked a personal best and won her third straight silver medal at the Commonwealth Games in the women’s 500-metre Time Trial. The podium finish comes after winning silver in both the Team Sprint and women’s Sprint earlier in the week.
Mitchell kicked off racing to set a Commonwealth Games record in a time of 33.294 seconds, before the final rider, Kristina Clonan from Australia, would outride the Olympic Champion, to take top spot and break the record by 0.06 seconds and to the gold.
“I’m really happy with my performance, especially since I don’t usually do the 500, so to do it here and walk away with a medal, I’m really excited,” said Mitchell. “I had a good start where I’m normally weaker in and had a personal best for my start. It felt really spinny towards the end but clocked a pretty good time. It was a bit of an emotional roller coaster since I was the first one to go and had to just sit and wait. In the end, it did end up coming down to the very last rider. You have to win and lose to your competition, and those losses just ignite that fire even more and everyone is pushing each other and it’s awesome.”
For endurance specialists, Maggie Coles-Lyster just missed her shot at getting on the podium in the women’s Points Race in the fight for bronze being just four points behind the third place finisher. After a crash in qualifying rounds of the men’s Scratch Race with Derek Gee having minor injuries as a result, Michael Foley would finish in 12th place in the final.
Tomorrow will be the final day of racing on the track featuring the women’s Keirin and Scratch Race, and men’s Points Race and Time Trial. Full results and complete schedule for both track and road events at the Games can be found here.
