'Rugby on wheels' - Controversy after Jack Carlin wins bronze medal at Paris Olympics

There was controversy after the men's sprint bronze medal ride-off at the Paris Olympics, when the winner, Team GB's Jack Carlin, was accused of coming out of his sprinter's lane and impeding his opponent. 

The Brit, riding on a warning for "irregular movement" in his quarterfinal heat with Japan's Kaiya Ota, beat Dutchman Jeffrey Hoogland to the final podium place, in a best of three that lasted four races.

Having won one race apiece, the third match-up was restarted after Carlin shuffled into Hoogland at slow speed on the track. The Brit then won the decider, but was accused by the Dutch team of veering from his lane and impeding the sprint. The jury saw no wrongdoing, and the Brit was declared the bronze medal winner. 

Speaking about the first incident – the small collision – Carlin said: "I put my hand up immediately, and was like, 'It's my fault.' Fundamentally, I should have known better than to turn up that quickly. I would never do that normally. It was heat of the moment. Jeffrey took it really well."

Hoogland returned to the track infield as they prepared for the restart, while Carlin rode two leisurely laps to "get myself composed". 

"Jason [Kenny, Carlin's coach] just told me to take a lap and by the time I came back around I was ready. I was treating it like a brand-new race," Carlin said. 

"He just said, 'Brush it off, it's happened now. You're in [position] one. You're going to have to deal with it. Let's get focused. You know how to beat him from one. Make sure with a lap and a half to go you're absolutely hell for leather because he's going to come.' And he did. It was emotional."

Following Carlin's victory in the final sprint, Mehdi Kordi, the head of the Dutch sprint squad, rushed up the steps into the commissaires' booth to question an infringement he believed he saw. 

"He came out of the sprinter's lane," Kordi said. "The jury made it clear to me that, with all the incidents that happened yesterday, with Carlin included, all the fighting – basically rugby on wheels – that if you come out of the sprinter's lane when it's engaged, we're going to penalise you.

"He came out of the sprinter's lane. It was two pedal strokes. I saw it with my own eyes. I was like, 'Great. We'll have an easy appeal.'"

After speaking with the jury, Kordi said he was told the move "didn't influence" the race. He had previously contested the coming together, which he believed might also have been worthy of a relegation. 

"I still am confused with all the warnings and headbutting and coming out of the line he was doing yesterday and today that it didn't actually come to anything," the Dutch sprint coach said, adding nonetheless that Carlin is a "worthy medallist". 

As the Brit stepped onto the podium to collect his medal, he was booed by a small section of the crowd. "Listen, it's nothing new," the 27-year-old said. "That's part of the Olympics. You're a sportsman and you put yourself in the light to be challenged like that. It's just how it is."

Carlin, already a silver medallist in the team sprint, will next ride the keirin on Saturday, where he will aim for a third medal in Paris. The Games come just three months after the Brit fractured his ankle, when he broke his crank while warming-up at an event in Canada.

"I'll be honest with you, I thought my Olympic journey was kind of over at that point," he said. "It's been the hardest three months of my career, without doubt, mentally, physically, to try and get myself back here and be medal competitive.

"Where the bone's broken, there's a little bit of an ache, but on the bike, you see red, and then you just don’t even think about it." 

Dutchman Harrie Lavreysen won the men's sprint competition, defending his title from Tokyo. He beat Australia's Matthew Richardson 2-0 in a best of three.