Australia And USA Power To Olympic Track Team Pursuit Crowns

Paris, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 8th Aug, 2024) Australia ended a 20-year wait to claim the Olympic men's team pursuit gold medal on Wednesday while Paris road race champion Kristen Faulkner helped power the United States to the women's title.

On another lightning quick day at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines velodrome, Dutch star Harrie Lavreysen shattered the men's sprint world record, stopping the clock at 9.088sec.

Led by Sam Welsford, the Australian pursuit quartet roared through 16 laps in 3:42.067.

It was 1.5 seconds outside their own world record set in qualifying, but enough to relegate fierce rivals Britain into second.

Defending Olympic champions Italy beat world champions Denmark in the bronze medal race.

"It is pretty crazy to call ourselves Olympic champions now. We probably did not have these expectations when we started training together," said Welsford.

"To come together like we did in the last month was pretty special.

"It has been 20 years since Australia won this, so that will sink in over the next week," he added.

Australia -- Welsford, Oliver Bleddyn, Conor Leahy and Kelland O'Brien -- carved a huge chunk out of Italy's world record on Tuesday to signal their intent.

The win was their first in men's pursuit since the Athens Games before Britain won gold four years later in Beijing and repeated the feat in London and Rio.

The British faced a rebuild after the retirement of Bradley Wiggins and Ed Clancy and slumped to seventh in Tokyo three years ago.

"We knew we had to be on the line, we had a lot to do, it wasn't out of our grasp," said Britain's Charlie Tanfield.

"We didn't funnel in at the end but we're still very proud of what we achieved."