GREAT BRITAIN’S long-awaited return to the women’s team sprint at the Olympic Games ended triumphantly, with Emma Finucane, Katy Marchant, and Sophie Capewell breaking the world record three times in one night.
After failing to qualify for this event since London 2012, Team GB set a new benchmark in every round, culminating in a time of 45.186 seconds, defeating New Zealand by half a second to claim Britain’s first-ever Olympic women’s team sprint medal.
“It doesn’t get much better than that,” said Marchant, the 31-year-old who represented Britain in the women’s sprint in Rio and Tokyo. “It means everything. It just shows the hard work we’ve put in. I always believed there was a reward for hard work. We’ve just come together as a team and put so much work into learning how to deliver on the day, and we were able to do that today.”
Britain was trailing after the first lap, but Capewell overturned the deficit before Finucane extended the lead on the final leg, sparking emotional celebrations. Marchant rushed to kiss her two-year-old son Arthur, while Finucane was embraced by her family in the stands.
Finucane, the 21-year-old individual sprint world champion from Carmarthen, has been tipped by the likes of Dame Laura Kenny to contend for three golds in Paris, with the individual event on Thursday and the keirin on Sunday.
“I just want to enjoy this moment,” she said when asked about those expectations. “I actually haven’t heard much of it because I have been dialled into today. I knew we had the team sprint, and this has been the front focus of my mind. I just want to take each race as it comes, as we all will.”
Capewell was in tears after the finish. In October 2021, her father Nigel, a former Paralympic cyclist who competed in Atlanta and Sydney, passed away, having nurtured her talent.
“The journey to get here for everyone has been up and down,” she said. “I’ve had my own personal battles. I wish my dad was up in the stands watching it, but I know he’s super proud of me. It didn’t feel real all day.”
The 25-year-old also had a lucky charm, wearing an old helmet of Britain’s seven-time Olympic champion Sir Jason Kenny, now the men’s sprint coach.
“That’s pretty cool,” she said. “It’s just a helmet that he’s no longer using, so I said, ‘I’ll have that one’.”
In qualifying for the men’s team sprint, Jack Carlin, Ed Lowe, and Hamish Turnbull clocked the second-fastest time, building confidence ahead of Tuesday’s first round and finals. A strong final leg from Carlin, the sole survivor of the team that took silver in Tokyo after Kenny and Ryan Owens retired, saw them post a time of 41.862 seconds, behind only the Dutch team of Harrie Lavreysen, Jeffrey Hoogland, and Roy van den Berg, who are strong favourites for gold.
Team GB was 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 and 43.241 seconds, just shy of 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 in fourth behind the team they beat in the Tokyo final, Denmark.
