Emma Finucane, Katy Marchant and Sophie Capewell won gold for Great Britain in the women’s team sprint at Paris 2024 after breaking the world record in all three rounds on Monday.
Team GB clocked a time of 45.186 seconds to beat New Zealand by five tenths of a second, claiming Britain’s first ever medal in an event in which they failed to even qualify at the last two Olympics.
Britain were behind on the splits after the first lap but Capewell overturned that deficit before Finucane extended the lead on the final leg. It sparked emotional celebrations in the velodrome with Marchant, 31, kissing her two-year-old son Arthur at the side of the track while the 25-year-old Capewell could be seen in floods of tears as they embraced.
The Olympic title is vindication for several years of hard work put in by the team to become competitive, after Marchant was left to fly the flag alone at both the Rio and Tokyo Olympics, winning individual bronze in Brazil.
Finucane, the 21-year-old individual world champion, is hoping this could be the first of three gold medals in Paris as she also targets the individual event and the keirin, with Marchant due to join her in the latter event.
Finucane said: “We have been working really hard on this. Process for us is really key and we nailed that final. I believed in us before we went out that we could do it but to actually execute lap one, lap two, lap three pretty much perfectly. To cross the line first I was just like ‘no way’. It’s a dream come true.”
Marchant described the gold win as “phenomenal, absolutely incredible” and Capewell added: “It didn’t feel real all day. We did every ride and it was like ‘oh faster, oh faster’ and we were top of the timesheets.”
The British trio topped the time sheets in qualifying, clocking 45.472 to narrowly beat the world record set by China at a national event in June. Illustrating the fast conditions of the Paris track, Germany and New Zealand both set world records within minutes of each other in the first round, only for Britain to go faster again with a time of 45.338 to earn their place in the gold medal race.
In qualifying for the men’s event Jack Carlin, Ed Lowe and Hamish Turnbull clocked the second fastest time to build confidence ahead of Tuesday’s first round and finals.
They stopped the clock in a time of 41.862 seconds after a big final leg from Carlin – the sole survivor of the team that took silver in Tokyo after the retirements of Sir Jason Kenny and Ryan Owens.
The Scot started the final lap more than half a second down on the time of the Australian squad but pulled it back to finish two tenths of a second up. As expected, the Dutch squad of Harrie Lavreysen, Jeffrey Hoogland and Roy van den Berg went fastest with a time of 41.279 seconds, a new Olympic record and only just outside their own world record set in 2020.
Team GB were second fastest in qualifying for the men’s team pursuit as Dan Bigham, Ethan Hayter, Ethan Vernon and Ollie Wood set a new British record with a time of three minutes 43.241 seconds, just shy of two seconds off the previous mark of 3:45.218 set at the Euros in January.
Australia topped the time sheets with a 3:42.958, with reigning champions Italy down in fourth behind the team they beat in the Tokyo final, Denmark.
