Emily Nelson Blog: 2016 European Championships Women's Madison
	October 26th By Emily Nelson         Women's Madison Podium (L-R Emily Kay, Emily Nelson, Lotte Kopecky, Kirsten Wild, Nina Kessler and Kirsten Wild) Photo: UEC           My teammate Emily Kay and I have ridden a couple of Madison races together in the past, but the one at the European championships last week was definitely the biggest and best. Going into it we didn't have many tactics or a race plan of any sort, as with it being the first ever Women's Madison at a major championships we didn't really know what to expect. Kay won the first sprint and I won the second, both ahead of the Belgians, which put us in a good position going forward. We made a couple of technical errors and missed a couple of changes so didn't end up scoring any points in the next couple of sprints. Compared to a points race, picking up points is definitely a lot harder to do. You have to plan ahead and make sure that you are in the right position to sprint from at least four laps out, else when teams in front of you change, you end up bike lengths back from the first team. Once we released this we started picking up points again, mainly ones or twos. I think we went a bit big at the start and payed for it in the middle with a lull in points scoring from us. However, knowing that the last sprint was double points we went big for it. Kay was in the race from about seven laps to go and set me up perfectly, attacking the bunch with about three laps to go. So that when she swung me in with two and a half laps to go, we were on the front leading out the sprint. I went straight from the change and managed to secure the win on the line, meaning that with the points doubled we got the ten points. This jumped us from fourth place into the silver medal position at the finish. We were both pretty chuffed to have come away with a medal. We learnt a lot from getting the chance to race it, and I think it's such a step forward for women's cycling. To have riders in the field such as Jolien D'hoore and Kirsten Wild was really special and shows how much the sport is moving on.           European Championships Women's Madison Results     Gold: Belgium (Lotte Kopecky and Jolien D'hoore) 36 Silver: Great Britain (Emily Nelson and Emily Kay) 26 Bronze: Netherlands (Nina Kessler and Kirsten Wild) 22 4th: France (Laurie Berthon and Coralie Demay) 17 5th: Russia (Aleksandra Chekina and Anastasiia Iakovenko) 12 6th: Italy (Rachele Barbieri and Maria Giulia Confalonieri) 12 7th: Ireland (Lydia Boylan and Lydia Gurley) 7 8th: Ukraine (Oksana Kliachina and Anna Nahirna) 5 9th: Czech Republic (Lucie Hochmann and Jarmila Machacova) 4 10th: Belarus (Polina Pivovarova and Ina Savenka) 1 11th: Poland (Lucja Pietrzak and Nikol Plosaj) 1