Teenage gymnast Amy Tinkler – Team GB’s youngest athlete at 16 – won bronze in the women’s floor exercise final. Büchli won the bronze in keirin at the 2013 UCI Track World Championships.
Advertisement
He and bronze medallist Azizulhasni Awang of Malaysia seemed to have jumped the gun in the final.
It meant she had a healthy cushion going into the frenetic points race, a 100-lap ride where sprints offer points.
The official with the gun on the side of the track fired on two occasions after deeming that the riders had passed the rear wheel of the derny pace bike before it had left the track.
Common sense prevailed on both occasions leaving Kenny to etch his mark on history by drawing level with Sir Chris Hoy as the owner of most gold medals.
There was also a fourth gold of the Rio Games for the United States’ Simone Biles as she triumphed in the women’s floor.
In winning the multi-discipline, two-day event and beating American veteran Sarah Hammer by a massive 24-point margin, she matched her feat at London 2012 when her team pursuit and omnium titles made her the new golden girl of British cycling.
Kenny, who marries Trott next month, later won his third gold medal in Rio in the men’s Keirin, holding his nerve after two false starts.
If they were a country, their five golds would now put them 13th in the medal table – above Spain, New Zealand and hosts Brazil.
The race was halted again on the second try when Germany’s Joachim Eilers sprinted early.
Trott couldn’t help but get teary-eyed when she walked onto the front stretch later to welcome her soon-to-be husband.
Kristina Vogel from Germany beat British talent Rebecca James to clinch victory in women’s sprint.
The four-time Gold Olympic medalist continued: “I think other teams just don’t realise that; the fact that we go to all these events with pretty basic equipment; we don’t bring out anything special until the Olympics”.
Hammer, who graduated from Chaparral High School in Temecula, finished with 206 points, seven points ahead of Belgium’s Jolien D’Hoore and 24 points behind Britain’s Lauren Trott.
“If you can win the worlds with basic equipment, you can come here and do what Britain has done today and know the week we’ve had”, she added.
Trott, now Britain’s most successful female Olympic athlete of all-time, joined her partner and fellow cyclist Jason Kenny in the Rio Velodrome yesterday after he too scooped gold at the Games.
Advertisement
But the historic moment almost never happened because Kenny nearly got disqualified before the start of the race.
