Women’s Team Pursuit to Chase the Medals in London
The Australian women’s team pursuit will attempt to ride for a gold medal tonight, after qualifying third fastest at the London Velodrome last night.
The pursuit squad – containing WAIS-AIS athletes Josie Tomic and Mel Hoskins – clocked a time of 3:19.719mins to secure the third best time, whilst the white hot Great Britain trio set a new world record in front of its home crowd, and is justifiably the firm favourite to take gold in tonight’s medal rounds.
The Australians however, will look to race off for that medal, and will compete against Canada in the first round. If Australia can edge the Canadians, it will ride for gold, should they lose, they will instead ride in the bronze medal race against the loser of the Great Britain and USA race.
The teams pursuit was just one part of an extremely exciting night of action that saw the dominant GB Team set more world records and claim another set of gold medals.
Australia’s team pursuit quartet of Jack Bobridge, Rohan Dennis, Michael Hepburn and Glenn O’Shea have spent the past four years thinking of only one thing – winning the gold medal at the London Olympic Games.
Last night they had to be content with silver after Great Britain produced one of the most powerful 4000m efforts of all time, posting a world record of 3min.51.649sec. to smash their previous world time.
The Aussies were disappointed, there’s no denying that, but they were gracious in defeat, lauding their opponents’ performance.
Team veteran Bobridge, 23, the only survivor from the Beijing Olympics, summed it up succinctly.
“For the past four years, we’ve had one goal in mind, and that’s to win a gold medal,” he said. “At the same time, you can’t knock a silver medal. That’s fantastic, and we’re over the moon to even get on the podium.
“We’re also disappointed we didn’t win, but you can’t complain. We got beaten by a team who rode a world record. They rode to perfection and they were the better team on the day.”
Teammate Rohan Dennis, 22, who likened the team pursuit quartet as being as close as brothers, echoed Bobridge’s sentiments.
“We’re very proud of it (the silver medal),” he said. “But we had one goal — to come here and win.
“Great Britain have ridden to perfection, you couldn’t fault anything they did, they’re very deserved of the gold, so well done to them really.”
The Australians’ time was 3min.54.581, ridden at an average speed of 61.386kmh, but they had no answer to the Brits, who averaged 62.160kmh throughout the 16 laps.
In another major shock last night, Anna Meares finished a distant sixth behind arch rival Victoria Pendleton in the keirin final despite posting impressive performances in the preliminary rounds.
But what loomed as a match race between the two champion women sprinters proved anything but, as Meares attacked to lead the field immediately the motor bike pulled out with two and a half laps remaining, and looked beaten at the bell.
Meares admitted her plan to attack so early back-fired. “I thought that would have been quite an advantageous position to be in, and fend off the attacks as they came from behind,” she said.
“I think the plan was a good one; I just didn’t execute it very well tonight and found myself in a reactive position tonight as opposed to reactive.”
Meares also agreed she now faced a challenge to regroup for the sprint event, which gets under way with qualifying on day nine of competition on Sunday.