“I have no words! It’s a dream come true,” Katy Marchant said while her teammate Sophie Capewell shed tears of joy. “We’re over the moon! We’ve worked so incredibly hard towards this; There’s no other two people I’d rather be with on the start line.”
“As you can tell I’m very emotional. It’s been such a long project,” Capewell aded. “We basically sat down as a team and said this is something we need to work on if we want to qualify for the games… but we haven’t just qualified, we’ve just won the whole bloody thing!”
“I’m honestly so proud,” Emma Finucane said. “We nailed that ride. I believed in us that we could do it but to execute it like that… I’ve never celebrated like that in my life. It’s so so special and we’ve worked so hard, so to everyone back home, I just want to say a huge thank you. The support has been unreal.”
The night started with a bang, as Great Britain’s Katy Marchant, Sophie Capewell and Emma Finucane set a new world record in the women’s team sprint (contested with three women per team instead of two, for the first time in the history of the Olympic Games) as early as the qualifying: 45’’472 (0.015 seconds faster than the Chinese reference from June 2024), at an average speed of 59.377 km/h.
It was only the beginning - the record was then beaten by Germany’s Emma Hinze, Lea Friedrich and Pauline Grabosch (45’’377) in the first round… But New Zealand - Ellesse Andrews, Shaane Fulton and Rebecca Petch - immediately went faster still (45’’348). And then Team GB went on to claim the record again: 45’’338, all in the first round!
The intensity kept on increasing with the finals. Germany got the better of the Netherlands (Kyra Lamberink, Hetty van de Wouw and Steffie van der Peet) in the battle for bronze. And Team GB beat the world record once more - 45’’186 (59.753km/h) - to take the gold medal against New Zealand.
The first track session of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 also featured the qualifying for the men’s team pursuit and the men’s team sprint.
In the team sprint, the Dutch trio Roy van den Berg, Harrie Lavreysen and Jeffrey Hoogland showed their strength, beating their own Olympic record that had powered them to the gold medal at Tokyo 2020. Their time of 41’’279 (65.409km/h) was followed by Team GB’s 41’’862 and Australia’s 42’’072.
In the team pursuit, Australians set the best time, 3’42’’958, and will thus face Italy (fourth best time, 3’44’’351) in the first round, on Tuesday. The qualifying has defined these match-ups ahead of the finals: Great Britain vs Denmark, France vs Canada, and New Zealand vs Belgium.
