There were times this year when Neah Evans 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 teammate Elinor 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, who becomes Wales’ most decorated female athlete with her fourth Olympic medal, 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.”
Meanwhile, Paisley sprinter Jack Carlin escaped a potential disqualification before winning bronze in the men’s team sprint. Carlin, who was racing on a warning, caused a collision in the decider of the best-of-three races with Jeffrey Hoogland.
While the pair crawled along, playing cat and mouse, Carlin swiped across his opponent’s line and careered into the side of his bike.
He was controversially given a reprieve, allowed to re-start and then held off the Dutchman to match the bronze he won in Tokyo three years ago.
“I should have known better,” he said of the incident, “I have raced a million times and just got it wrong. Jeffrey took it really well.
“I won’t lie, the last two days have been mentally draining and the two laps while waiting to see what the judges decided was a mental battle.
“I was not ready but got through it. Jason [Kenny] told me to go round again. This is a bonus medal.”
Carlin, who now has four Olympic medals after also winning silver in the men’s sprint, has had a difficult journey of his own. He revealed he broke his ankle in April and only took his boot off last week.
“I thought my Olympics were over,” he said. “It has been the hardest three months of my career, both mentally and physically to try and get myself back here.”
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