Great Britain set new Olympic record and win third successive men’s team sprint gold
Great Britain made a perfect start to their quest for track cycling dominance by setting a new Olympic record and snaring a third successive men’s team sprint gold – Team GB’s fourth of the Games – in the velodrome.
It was a shock victory over world champions New Zealand for Britain, who had failed to earn a podium place in the team sprint at any of the World Championships since London 2012.
But sparkling trio Philip Hindes, Jason Kenny, who has now won four Olympic gold medals, and Callum Skinner made a mockery of such statistics and clocked a winning time of 42.440 seconds.
Britain’s power in track cycling is deep-rooted with Team GB winning eight out of the 10 gold medals on offer in London four years ago, as well as seven in Beijing in 2008.
Similar supremacy was hinted at again last night as Laura Trott, Joanna Rowsell Shand, Elinor Barker and Katie Archibald set a new world record of 4:12.260 seconds to breeze through qualification in the women’s team pursuit. GB will now face Canada on Saturday for a place in the gold-medal race.
The men’s team, which includes Sir Bradley Wiggins, followed suit, qualifying fastest with a time of 3:51.943 – just three tenths of a second off the world record – and almost three and a half seconds clear of second-placed Denmark. New Zealand await in Friday's semi-final.
Team sprint joy proved the extent of Team GB’s golden haul yesterday as the men’s rugby sevens side were hammered 43-7 by Fiji. Great Britain had to be content with silver after earlier beating South Africa 7-5 in a nerve-shredding semi-final.
David Florence and Richard Hounslow, meanwhile, repeated their feat of London 2012 by taking silver in the C2 double, narrowly missing out on Britain’s second canoe slalom gold in Rio following Joe Clarke’s heroics on Wednesday.
The duo, both aged 34, finished just under half a second behind winners Peter and Ladislav Skantar – cousins from Slovakia. The medal was the third Olympic gong of Florence’s career.
“Top to bottom it was a good run,” said Hounslow. “Maybe not perfect but that’s the name of the game here. To come away with an Olympic medal is a fantastic achievement and we’re really proud of it.”
There was mixed news for British interests in the tennis singles. Defending champion Andy Murray overcame the surprise of losing eight successive games to defeat world No40 Fabio Fognini of Italy 6-1, 2-6, 6-3.
Victory propelled world No2 Murray, who has now won 15 consecutive matches since losing the French Open final to Novak Djokovic in June, to the quarter-finals where he will face Steve Johnson of the United States.
There was no such joy for British No1 Johanna Konta, whose Olympic dream subsided following a comprehensive defeat to her Australian Open conqueror Angelique Kerber. Konta succumbed 1-6, 2-6.