GB women smash world record in team pursuit heats
Trio beat Australian time on way to finals Men’s sprint team set new Olympic mark
Great Britain’s women’s pursuit team of Laura Trott, Joanna Rowsell-Shand, Katie Archibald and Elinor Barker stormed to a world record in qualifying last night to suggest they are in excellent nick ahead of tomorrow’s finals.
The GB quartet posted a brilliant 4min 13.260sec to beat the time set by Australia at the world championships in Paris last year by nearly half a second. The United States, the reigning world champions, were second quickest in 4-14.286, over a second down on GB.
The event has changed significantly since London 2012 when it was three riders over three kilometres and Trott, Rowsell Shand and Dani King became Olympic champions. With an extra rider, and an extra kilometre to cover, King moved over to the road. But the talent that has arrived to replace her is seriously impressive.
They have had a few stumbles along the way. Their defeat by Australia in Paris last year was their first defeat in more than four years. And they then stumbled even more significantly at this year’s world championships in March, not even making the final gold medal ride and having to settle for bronze.
Archibald was missing from those championships having crashed her motorbike in January, fracturing her elbow and rupturing a knee ligament. But she is clearly back to her best, as are Barker and Rowsell Shand. Trott, 24, seemingly never loses her form. GB will face Canada in the first round – effectively the semi-final – tomorrow. They are likely to have to face the US or Australia in the final.
Australia had Melissa Hoskins – the girl who fell in a mass pile-up in training at the start of the week and had to be taken to hospital – in their quartet. And they managed a 4-19.059 in qualifying, an Olympic record. But that time was soon blown away by the British quartet. They were over two seconds up on Australia by the halfway stage, Rowsell-Shand sitting up after 3.5km. The US were less measured, initially ahead of GB’s world-record pace, then slowing to finish over a second down. But they may have kept something in the tank.
In the men’s team sprint, GB’s chances of defending their Olympic gold medal from London 2012 were hanging in the balance last night after they traded Olympic records with their New Zealand rivals in qualifying to set up a gold medal shoot-out.
The GB trio Philip Hindes, Jason Kenny and Callum Skinner broke the record first, setting a rapid 42.562sec in qualifying from the opening round. But New Zealand’s Ethan Mitchell, Sam Webster and Edward Dawkins stormed back in the first round – effectively the semi-final – posting 42.535sec, one tenth faster than GB’s 42.640sec.
That set up an exciting finale in the brand new Olympic Velodrome, which was packed to the rafters last night, in stark contrast to many of the venues thus far during these Games.
It was an exciting first night of track cycling with the times suggesting that the British riders are in excellent nick and the special tricks and flicks for which British Cycling is famed are very much working.
Hindes, Kenny and Skinner had apparently been flying in training.
And with their new R&D packages very much on display – almost indecently transparent skinsuits and gleaming Cervelo bikes partly engineered by undergraduates and PhD students at Cambridge University – they began the evening in storming form, setting a new Olympic record.
The performance was particularly encouraging for the fact that Skinner – who having learned his craft at Edinburgh’s historic Meadowbank was inevitably dubbed ‘the new Chris Hoy’ from the moment he burst on to the scene – managed to ‘get on’ to the back of the other two, both Olympic champions from London 2012.
All the talk before these Games had been of whether Skinner could fill the cleats of his compatriot at man three. An unenviable task – and an impossible one. There will never be another Hoy, a man who utterly dominated his craft for a decade, winning six Olympic golds.
Skinner, just 23, is a young man still learning his trade. But despite a few hiccups on the road to Rio, he was able to hold the pace and see his team home in style.