Eleven days into the Tokyo 2020 Games, the track cycling events kicked off at the Izu Velodrome, two-and-a-half hours south of Tokyo. The reigning Women’s Team Pursuit World Champion squad of Chloé Dygert (Brownsburg, Ind.; CANYON//SRAM Racing), Jennifer Valente (San Diego; Twenty24), Emma White (Duanesburg, N.Y.; Rally Cycling), and Lily Williams (Tallahassee, Fla.; Rally Cycling) opened the 7-day event for Team USA with the Women’s Team Pursuit Qualifying.
Starting seventh out of eight teams, the women’s squad had the ability to watch all but one team compete before them. The squad from Germany, consisting of Franziska Brausse, Lisa Brennauer, Lisa Klein, and Mieke Koerger, broke the World and Olympic record by stopping the clock at 4:07.307, almost three seconds faster than the record set in 2016 by the British team in Rio. Their time put them in first. The British team of Katie Archibald, Elinor Barker, Laura Kenney, and Josie Knight would seed second with a time of 4:09.022. The American squad would keep a close pace to the German’s, finishing with a time of 4:10.118, earning the third seed out of qualifying.
Talking about the world record breaking ride from the German team, Gary Sutton, USA Cycling’s Women’s Track Endurance Coach, said, “We knew there would be world records broken this week. That's the first thing. The track's quick, and our schedule was for 4:07. We went out for 15-second laps. That's what the plan was.” He further explained, “That's where we're at at the moment. But, you know, one thing you do here, you take one round at a time and tomorrow is a different day. We'll go back. We'll look at the data; we’ll look at the pool structure and try to rearrange things. That's a big gap. But tomorrow's a different day.”
On Tuesday, the Women’s Team Pursuit squad is up again to go into Round 1. You can catch Dygert, Valente, White, and Williams going up against Team GB in Heat 3 of Round 1. Later in the session, they’ll go into finals based on their time from Round 1.
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