More world records on the second night of track events in the Olympic Games Paris 2024 confirmed the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines velodrome will witness extraordinary performances all week long. On Tuesday, the Netherlands – Harrie Lavreysen, Roy van den Berg and Jeffrey Hoogland – won the men’s team sprint and broke the 41-second barrier to get the better of Team GB (Ed Lowe, Hamish Turnbull, Jack Carlin), silver medallists. Australia claimed the bronze medal against France.
In line with Team GB’s title in the women’s team sprint on Monday, the Dutch arrows Van den Berg, Lavreysen and Hoogland beat the world record in the first round of the men’s team sprint: 41’’191 (65.548km/h). Team GB also showed form with a time of 41’’819 to qualify for the final for gold, while the fans roared on the French sprinters, faced with Australia in the final for bronze.
Leigh Hoffman, Matthew Richardson and Matthew Glaetzer got the better of the Frenchmen to step on to the podium. And the Oranje stars beat the world record one more time (40’’949, 65.936km/h) to retain the Olympic Champion title they claimed at Tokyo 2020 and add one more gold to their extraordinary collective record.
Afterwards, Hoogland admitted that going under 41 seconds was “a sort of secret dream.”
“Yesterday we started thinking about it because the track is really fast. We had this feeling that we needed a world record to be Olympic Champions, so that’s what we aimed for, and in the finals, going under 41 seconds, was absolutely crazy.”
In the first round of the men’s team pursuit, Australia’s Oliver Bleddyn, Sam Welsford, Conor Leahy and Kelland O’Brien set an electrifying world record (3’42’’151) to defeat the reigning Olympic Champions and previous holders of the record, Italy. In the final for gold, they’ll face Great Britain’s Ethan Hayter, Oliver Wood, Charlie Tanfield and Ethan Vernon on Wednesday. The Italians will battle against Denmark for the bronze.
Earlier in the evening, the session started in strong fashion with New Zealand (Ally Wollaston, Bryony Botha, Emily Shearman and Nicole Shields) dominating the qualifying of the women’s team pursuit in a time of 4’’04’’679. The USA, Great Britain and Italy will battle with the kiwis for the gold medal on Wednesday. Germany, Australia, France and Canada will aim for the bronze.
Results available here