Jason Kenny lived to fight another day in defence of his Olympic men’s keirin title but admitted his form is not where he hoped it would be at the Tokyo Games.
The 33-year-old had to go through the first-round repechages after finishing fourth in his opening heat, but followed Jack Carlin through to Sunday’s quarter-finals as he won his second race of the day.
Kenny has already bid farewell to his team sprint and individual sprint titles this week, finishing eighth in the latter on Thursday, and said on Saturday he was not where he needed to be physically.
Dominant from @JasonKenny107 in the repechage 👊 He progresses to the quarter finals in emphatic form, that's what we like to see 🔥🇬🇧#TeamGB #Tokyo2020 pic.twitter.com/OuRHfNIxSU — British Cycling (@BritishCycling) August 7, 2021
“I want to be the fastest basically, but blatantly I’m obviously not the fastest,” he said. “It doesn’t mean I can’t come away with something from the Olympics.
“The keirin is all about being in the right place at the right time and scrapping for every inch.
“That’s what I’ll do now, that’s what I did today and I’ll keep that mentality going forward and hopefully get something out of it.”
Asked why he was not at his best, Kenny added: “That’ll be for the debrief afterwards. For whatever reason the tapering just hasn’t worked.
“We’ll have to sit down and work out why that was. Hopefully it’s not that I’m just too old now and getting slower.
“It’s not really one to worry about for now. For the minute we’ve got the form we’ve got and we’ll try to make the most of it.”
Carlin, who took bronze in the individual sprint on Friday, advanced after a crash-strewn heat of his own.
The Scot struck Malaysia’s Muhammad Sahrom in the first running of their heat, seemingly after getting a nudge himself from Dutchman Matthijs Buchli, forcing a rerun as Sahrom hit the deck and took out Kazakhstan’s Sergey Ponomaryov.
“Keirin’s like that, look at today,” Carlin said. “There have been a lot of crashes and a lot of close calls. I think everyone’s basically doing whatever it takes to get through and it’s dangerous.
“It’s been absolutely manic. I just hope it calms down tomorrow to be honest with you.”
Katy Marchant’s hopes of a women’s sprint medal at these Games were ended in the quarter-finals as she was beaten 2-0 by Hong Kong’s Lee Wai Sze.
Marchant, who took Olympic bronze in 2016, tried to go on the attack in both heats but could not then hold off the fast-finishing Lee down the straight.
It means Marchant will leave the Games empty-handed after her keirin hopes were ended by a crash on Thursday.
