The New Zealand men’s team pursuit quartet rode above themselves today to qualify for tomorrow’s Olympic semi-finals.
Their time of 3min 46.079s smashed the New Zealand record by the best part of a second.
Tomorrow New Zealand, third fastest today, race Italy and Denmark race Britain to find the two teams riding for gold.
Italy set the early pace today and broke the Olympic record with a time of 3min 45.895s. Canada, Germany and Switzerland were slower and New Zealand stepped up with a really strong challenge.
The New Zealanders – Aaron Gate, Campbell Stewart, Regan Gough and Jordan Kerby - were inside Italy’s time with just a couple of laps to go, but faded fractionally.
Denmark, the world champions, were outstanding and looked formidably strong in recording 3min 45.014s.
New Zealand’s cause was probably helped when the Australians crashed. They were allowed a re-ride later, but could not push Great Britain out of fourth spot.
Aaron Gate said later one of the heartening aspects of the performance was that the team had more to give.
“We’re pretty happy because that’s the fastest we’ve ever gone and the fact that we can still nit-pick little areas where we can improve is encouraging.”
He feels the four semi-finalists are close enough that any could win.
“We’re happy to be racing the Italians. We got within a tenth of a second of them today and I’m sure we can pull that back.”
New Zealand has a very strong tradition in the men’s team pursuit, having won Olympic medals in Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012 and also 7 world championship medals, one a gold.
The New Zealand women’s team pursuit squad raced solidly, but were no match for the world record-breaking Germans.
The New Zealanders – Holly Edmondson, Bryony Botha, Kirstie James and Jaime Nielsen – were timed at 4min 12.536s, the sixth fastest of the eight teams. Australia were seventh and Canada eighth.
The Germans upset everyone’s calculations. Riding third, they were sensational, recording 4min 07.307s and smashing the world record by a staggering three seconds.
After them, each team tried to match the Germans, but all came unstuck at some point.
Behind Germany, the United States, Italy and France were the quickest today and they are the four teams that get to ride for gold tomorrow.
New Zealand will race Australia, and depending on times, still have a shot at the bronze medal.
New Zealand coach Ross Machejefski was quick to pay tribute to the German women. “That was an unbelievable time. Well done to them,” he said. “Our ride was not a bad ride. actually. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great – it was just okay.”
He said the team did not manage to get on the right pace from the start.
“A couple of riders rode really well. We were not that far away and with a couple of tweaks tomorrow I believe we can be in the hunt for the bronze medal.
“We are about two seconds off the time we need and we can give it a good nudge. We always seem to end up taking on Aussie in world cups and world championships – it will be cool with a trans-Tasman battle.
“We have to put up the third or fourth fastest time of the day and I think we are right in the hunt for that.”