Start as you mean to go on, they say, and this was quite some start.
On opening night here in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, Britain’s track cyclists wasted no time in striking gold, the women’s team sprint trio of Katy Marchant, Sophie Capewell and the much-hyped Emma Finucane breaking the world record three times in as many hours en route to the podium’s top step.
Their final ride of 45.186 seconds was flawless, New Zealand beaten into silver and world champions Germany forced to settle for bronze.For all Team GB's velodrome dominance, this event had been a strange dud, Victoria Pendleton and Jess Varnish disqualified in the inaugural edition at London 2012 and no British outfit even qualifying since.
Marchant had flown the sprint flag solo for much of that time, and did so well, winning individual bronze in Rio along the way. But having become a mother for the first time in 2022, she returned from maternity leave to find a generation of upstarts on the tear and had to scrap hard to win her place back. Indeed, when Britain claimed silver behind the Germans at the World Championships 12 months ago she was not in the three.
Capewell was but at 25 these are her first Games - though not a first Games for the Capewells, late father Nigel having ridden in the Paralympics at Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 2000.
And then there is Finucane, the youngest at 21 and already poised to inherit the golden girl crown passed from Pendleton to Dame Laura Kenny as she targets the same hat-trick of Olympic sprint golds once achieved by Sir Chris Hoy and Sir Jason Kenny. Pull it off and she will surely become the breakout sensation of the Games.
Shorn of those names made household by Olympics past, Britain’s track cyclists have flown a little beneath the broader radar in the run up to Paris. The talk from those in the know, though, has been bullish. Hoy called Finucane a “superstar” in-waiting. Kenny said this was the best women’s sprint team she had ever seen. Jason has been a little quieter, understandably, since he is here in an official capacity, as a sprint coach. But whether they know the faces or not, when the British public tune into the velodrome, they expect gold.
Team GB again finished top of cycling’s medal table in Tokyo, for the fourth Olympics in a row, but needed more help than usual from beyond the velodrome.
In his debrief at the time, British Cycling’s performance director Stephen Park had mentioned qualifying a women’s sprint team for Paris as a key aim for the next cycle. The idea that their first Olympic ride in a dozen years would also be the fastest in history, though, was probably not on his mind.
The caveat here is that the team sprint in this three-rider format is relatively new, only adopted in major championships post-Tokyo and up from two on the Olympic programme for the first time here. The expectation, as a result, was that going below the old record might be necessary just to make the podium and so it proved. Still, doing so in qualifying marked a statement of intent.
Into the next round, Germany issued their response, before New Zealand and then Britain again produced the third and fourth world records of the night to set up a knife-edge clash for gold, just one-hundredth of a second between their times.
The Brits, though, knew they could get quicker. New Zealand were ahead on the clock a lap in, but with their team fractured, a gap between riders one and two, and the writing on the wall. Britain were more slick, more in-tune, edging it at 500m. Then they were away and gone, winning by a relative chasm at half-a-second as Finucane let loose.
The ball is rolling and where that sight in particular is concerned, you suspect there is plenty more to come
