August 6/24 16:37 pm - Olympic Games: Records Continue to Fall at the Track on Day 2

Posted by Editoress on 08/6/24
 

Day 2 of the Olympic track competition saw more records tumble, with the Dutch men's Team Sprint squad breaking their own Olympic and world record twice on their way to gold. Canada finished eighth in the men's Team Sprint final standings.

The Dutch team of Harrie Lavreysen, Jeffrey Hooglands and Roy van den Berg broke their world/Olympic record from Tokyo in Round 1, and then in the gold medal final against Great Britain became the first team ever to go under 41 seconds, with a time of 40.949 seconds. Australia beat France for the bronze medal. The Canadian squad of Nick Wammes, James Hedgcock and Tyler Rorke set a new best time of 43.666 seconds in the first round.

"I think we had a pretty good performance, and all three rides were faster than my PB [personal best]", said Rorke. "I have one job, and that's one lap as hard as I can, and I feel like I did a pretty good job doing that. Nick was the only one of us that competed at Tokyo; James and I weren't even old enough to compete, so for the age that our team is, we've got a lot of potential in the coming years."

"We're missing experience; this combo has been together for two and a half years, and a lot of the teams have been together for years and years. The next couple of years, if we can get some more experience, we've got a good shot. It's definitely cool [to see world records fall], it's fun to see where the sport has gotten to. It's a goal to chase."

In women's Team Pursuit qualifying, New Zealand surprised a lot of countries by qualifying first with a very fast 4:04.679, over half a second ahead of the USA. Great Britain, clearly missing the injured Katie Archibold, was third. The Canadian squad of Erin Attwell, Ariane Bonhomme, Maggie Coles-Lyster and Sarah van Dam qualified eighth out of ten teams with a time of 4:12.205, which was enough to move them on to tomorrow's Round 1. In an extremely unusual occurrence, the Canadian team also rode an extra lap when the bell did not go off to signal their last lap. They thought they had finished (and actually had completed the correct number of laps), when the bell rung, forcing them to scramble back into formation and do an additional (and unnecessary) lap. The team has also been dealing with illness, with two riders completing a course of antibiotics earlier in the week.

"It was just pretty good to get it [qualifying] out of the way," said Coles-Lyster. "We were all pretty nervous heading into it, so we just needed to get through this, shake out the cobwebs, shake out the turbulence of the past few days. We ended up doing an extra lap because they had a mistake with the lap counter and the bell. So getting through and battling in the Round to more, I think we're all pretty pleased."

"But we all want a medal, I don't think that's a secret," confirmed Coles-Lyster, "and I think today's ride show's that we're definitely in it, and no one should count us out. We're on track for a good time, and we just need to put it together."

"We were aiming for a 4:10," said Attwell. "We faced a lot of adversity over the last week, and I think we did really good, considering. I think it will be great to execute proper distributions tomorrow, and hopefully everyone's feeling 100% by then. We always perform better on our second and third rides, so there are better things to come."

In Round 1 of the men's Team Pursuit, Australia set a new world and Olympic record of 3:40.730, and will meet Great Britain tomorrow in the gold medal final, while Denmark and Italy will face off for bronze. The Canadian squad of Dylan Bibic, Michael Foley, Mathias Guillemette and Carson Mattern weren't quite as fast as in qualifying, but for the second day in a row broke 3:50, with a time of 3:49.245, and will meet Belgium in the 7-8 final tomorrow.

"We decided to go out there and push out the boat as far as we could and see if we could hang on," explained Foley. "I think we pushed it a little too far, but we all finished with the tanks empty, so that's the best way to finish it. We went out pretty hard, and when I caught the split of 13.4, I thought, 'that's pretty quick, and I hope we can hold on'. It was a little too much, but we had to go out as hard as we possibly could, and that's what we did. We didn't really have a target time, but we went out with the goal of 14.6 [splits], which would have been 3:45 . I know that's a tall order, but we just had to give it our best. Tomorrow we'll see if we can take that national record back, and hopefully that's good enough for seventh as well."

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World Records Fall as Track Cycling Begins in Paris