The Izu velodrome again proved extremely rapid on Wednesday, with the track specialists producing more fireworks for the third day of competition at the Olympic Games. In the main event of the day, Italy narrowly took gold in the team pursuit final, beating the reigning UCI World Champions Denmark and setting a blazing new world record to boot.
As he crossed the finish line, Filippo “Top” Ganna’s face said a lot about the magnitude of what the Italian star and his companions of the Squadra Azzurra had just achieved. The same mix of incredulity and accomplishment illuminated the expressions of Simone Consonni, Francesco Lamon and Jonathan Milan as they brought Italy back to the top of the team pursuit ladder.
Not only did the Italian quartet claim the first gold medal for their country in the men’s team pursuit for more than 60 years (they had won the event seven times between 1920 and 1960), Ganna and his teammates also broke the world record they had established the previous day: 3’42’’032.
Denmark led the way with 1000m to go, with a margin of 0’’867 that would have been enough to claim gold on many occasions… this time, Lasse Norman Hansen, Niklas Larsen, Fredrik Madsen and Rasmus Pedersen had to settle for silver (3’42’’198).
In the final for bronze, New Zealand had a strong start before Aaron Gate hit the deck and Australia (Kelland O’Brien, Sam Welsford, Leigh Howard and Lucas Plapp) overlapped the Kiwis to round out the podium.
One day after the Netherlands dominated the men’s team sprint against Great Britain, the fast men were back in action on Wednesday with the qualifying and two following rounds of the individual sprint, deciding the 12 riders going through for Thursday’s 1/8 finals.
Dutchmen and Britons reignited their battle as early as the qualifying, with Jack Carlin (GBR) setting a new Olympic record of 9’’306 in the 200m flying start. Eight more riders went faster than the time set by his compatriot Jason Kenny five years ago at the Rio Olympic Games (9’’551), including Kenny himself (9’’510, 8th fastest time on the day), but only two outsprinted Carlin: the Oranje stars Jeffrey Hoogland and Harrie Lavreysen. Inseparable after their first Olympic Games gold on Tuesday, they covered the 200m flying start in the exact same time: 9’’215!
The 1/32 finals mostly followed the hierarchy set in the qualifying and offered a major battle between Kenny and the Malaysian star Mohd Azizulhasni Awang. The British icon narrowly won the sprint, forcing Awang to - successfully - battle in the repechages.
History repeated in the 1/16 finals for Awang: after losing a tight duel against UCI World Cycling Centre trainee Nicholas Paul (TTO), he went on to win his repechage, and will face Hoogland in the next round.
The other nine riders who have qualified for the 1/8 finals are Lavreysen, Carlin, Kenny, Denis Dmitriev (ROC), Maximilian Levy (GER), Sam Webster (NZL), Yuta Wakimoto (JPN), Sébastien Vigier (FRA) and Muhammad Shah Firdaus (MAS).
The first round of the women’s keirin brought early surprises with riders including Germany’s Emma Hinze (reigning UCI World Champion), Republic of Korea’s Hyejin Lee, Hong Kong’s Wai Sze Lee, Great Britain’s Katy Marchant, the Netherlands’ Shanne Braspennincx and France’s Mathilde Gros having to go through the repechages.
Hinze and most of her strongest rivals on paper made it through the repechages but the 2020 UCI World Championships silver medallist Hyejin Lee was eliminated in heat 1, which was dominated by Ellesse Andrews (NZL).
Japanese star Yuka Kobayashi delighted the local fans as she avoided such trouble with an automatic qualification for Thursday’s quarter-finals.
The fourth day of competition in the Izu velodrome also promises to be action-packed, with medals to be awarded in the men’s Omnium (Scratch Race, tempo race, Elimination and points race) and women’s keirin, as well as the 1/8 finals and quarter-finals of the men’s sprint.