Jennifer Valente came up just short in her bid for another Olympics medal Friday.
Valente, a San Diego native who has trained in the Roanoke area with the Virginia’s Blue Ridge TWENTY24 cycling team, teamed with Lily Williams to place fourth for the United States in the Women’s Madison competition in the Saint Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome.
Valente and Williams scored 18 points in the event, finishing behind gold medalist Italy (37 points), silver medalist Great Britain (31) and bronze medalist the Netherlands (28).
France finished fifth, followed by Poland, New Zealand, Australia, Belgium, Ireland, Japan, Germany, Switzerland and Canada.
The Madison consists of 12 10-lap sprints with points awarded on a 5-3-2-1 basis for finishing in positions 1 through 4. An additional 20 points are awarded to a team that laps another competitor. Twenty points are deducted from teams that get lapped. Double points are awarded in the final sprint. Only one cyclist per team races on the track at any portion of the event.
Valente and Williams were part of the USA team along with Chloe Dygert and Kristen Faulkner that won a gold medal Wednesday in Team Pursuit when they set a national record of 4 minutes, 4.036 seconds.
Valente, 29, will seek another medal Sunday in Women’s Omnium, an event she won in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.