With another formidable performance, the Olympic and multi world champion, the American Jennifer Valente dominated the points race and thus added her fourth gold medal at the Pan American Track Championships being held in Los Angeles until Sunday.
Valente had already won the scratch, the omnium and the elimination race, but she did not want to leave the competition without the gold medal in one of the events that she declared “is one of my favorites because you always have to be sprinting and you can’t be careless for a second”. Behind her with 79 points were Mexico’s Victoria Velazco (45) and Canada’s Lily Plante (8).
As if to show her world-class quality, Colombia’s Martha Bayona dominated the 500-meter time trial without a hitch. With a time of 33.494 seconds, the South American left for silver and bronze the Mexican Jessica Salazar (34.519) and the American Emily Hayes (34.923), respectively.
For his second title in this continental event, Paul Nicholas from Trinidad and Tobago won the pure sprint after beating Cristian David Ortega from Colombia in both heats. For the third place, the Colombian Santiago Ramirez needed three heats to beat the Surinamese Jair Tjon En Fa.
The women’s individual pursuit saw American Emily Ehrlich become queen for the second time (she had been part of the winning quartet in the team pursuit) after dominating Chile’s Aranza Villalón in the final. In the bronze medal, another local, Olivia Cummins, won ahead of Canada’s Ngaire Barraclough.
Finally, the penultimate day of this Pan American Track Championships concluded with the first gold for Canada, which came through Chris Ernst in the omnium by accumulating 131 points in the sum of the four events of this modality. Behind were Colombia’s Juan Esteban Arango (115) and Mexico’s Ricardo Peña (114).
After these results, the United States continues to lead the standings with 9 gold and four bronze medals, followed by Mexico (3-2-4), Colombia (2-7-2), Trinidad and Tobago (2-0-2), Canada (1-6-3), Chile (0-2-0) and Barbados and Argentina (0-0-1).
The finals of the keirin (f), the madison (f and m), the elimination race (m) and the kilometers against the clock (m) are scheduled for Sunday’s finals.