It had been 20 years since Australia last won a gold medal in the team pursuit at the Olympics. The United States never had. Both countries vanquished those demons at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines velodrome in Paris, with Australia beating nemesis Great Britain in the men’s final for a first Olympic win since Athens in 2004, while the US women dispatched New Zealand for a breakthrough victory.
The American women have been a powerhouse in the discipline with medals in three straight Olympics starting in 2012, plus four World Championship titles dating back to 2016. Chloé Dygert and Jen Valente have anchored every one of those squads, but Olympic gold has always eluded them.
New Zealand set the fastest times in qualifying, but the US team of Dygert, Valente, Lily Williams and Kristen Faulkner bettered them in the elimination round. Matched in the gold medal final, New Zealand looked smoother out of the start but the time splits didn’t lie, placing the Americans slightly ahead on the opening lap. The gap grew quickly to over a second before Valente – who will defend her Tokyo gold medal in Omnium on Sunday – pulled off.
New Zealand’s quartet stayed intact slightly longer, but after Nicole Shields dropped back the remaining trio of Ally Wollaston, Bryony Botha and Emily Shearman made a final desperate run. The American trio began to look a little ragged, and New Zealand’s strong effort started to cut into the lead. But with a deficit of 1.66 seconds with just 750 meters to go, there simply wasn’t enough track left to haul back the Americans, who crossed .621 seconds ahead with an average speed of 58.9 km/h. Great Britain handily dispatched Italy in the bronze medal match.
It was a watershed moment for both Faulkner and Dygert, for different reasons. Faulkner, a road racer who began training with the team pursuit squad only last year, took her second gold of the Games, making her one of a select few athletes ever to win gold in different disciplines at a single Games. Faulkner credited her teammates and staff support. “I think it says a lot about the coaches we have and the team we have around us,” she said. “I have learned a lot in the past year from my teammates. I don’t think my improvement came from me; it came from the people around me.”
For Dygert, who had also targeted the time trial and finished a disappointing (for her) third there after crashing on a rainy course, the gold was the culmination of a nearly decade-long effort for her and USA Cycling. The latter has long targeted the event and has faced criticism for elevating it and the women’s time trial above the road race in its team selection criteria, which left Faulkner off the road team altogether until automatic qualifier Taylor Knibb abdicated her spot. That criticism followed even – perhaps especially – after Faulkner’s dramatic win in Sunday’s road race, but gold in the Team Pursuit should lessen it.
“USA Cycling has put a lot of work and time into this event specifically,” Dygert said. “When I came into the program in 2016, this was the medal that USA Cycling had wanted more than any other. This has been the focus from the beginning of my career.” Full results here.
Australia’s win capped a perfect Games for its men’s quartet of Sam Welsford, Oliver Bleddyn, Conor Leahy and Kelland O’Brien. The squad set the best time in qualifying and won its first round heat while setting a new world record, knocking nearly 1.5 seconds off Italy’s three-year-old mark. But in the gold medal final against longtime foil Great Britain, the Aussies were caught in a tight battle that came down to the last lap.
In the opening half of the race, the teams seesawed back and forth, with the gap often in the hundredths of a second until Australia eked out a narrow .2 second advantage at 2,250 meters that it held for much of the second half over the British quartet of Ethan Hayter, Ethan Vernon, Dan Bigham and Charlie Tanfield. Even after Tanfield and O’Brien both pulled off, the remaining trios worked smoothly together.
With just 250 meters to go, Australia held a desperately thin margin of .168 seconds but as the Brits fought to close, disaster struck: Hayter, striving at the front, inched too far forward on his saddle and slipped off. He stayed upright (barely) but even the tiniest mistake was too costly in an event with such a thin line between gold and silver and where time is taken from the third rider across the line.
“I just really gave too much,” he said according to The Guardian. “My whole body went weak and I really struggled to hold myself on the bike.” Bigham confirmed that, telling The Guardian that Hayter had done a half a lap more at the front than normal and the strain had just been too much.
It was a bitter loss for Team GB and one which echoed a similar disaster that cost the Australians three years ago in Tokyo. At the 2020 Games in qualifying, Alex Porter smashed headfirst into the velodrome’s pine surface after his handlebar unexpectedly broke. The Australians were given a second run but failed to qualify for the gold-medal race.
“They deserve this. We’ve been to hell and back, and for them to make this happen has been amazing,” said Australian coach Tim Decker to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “People forget Tokyo and what happened,” he added, crediting the team’s resilience after that event with helping it to move forward to today’s result.
Italy bested Denmark in the bronze medal match. Click here for full results. Track racing continues Thursday with the women’s Keirin finals and the men’s Omnium event.
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