Relay, Mixed

The German team arrived at the Games having been crowned World champions only three weeks earlier, but it should be mentioned that Great Britain and the USA fielded second-string quartets, and France opted to not even enter a team for the race. After the events of the individual races, the French were elevated to the status of favorites, as all their team had finished in top four placings. Their chances seemed to have disappeared at the end of the first leg, however, when Pierre Le Corre lost a lot of time when he clashed bikes with Hayden Wilde of New Zealand, sending both men to the floor.

Men’s champion Alex Yee gave Great Britain a small lead over Germany at the end of the first leg, but Lisa Tertsch reversed the positions by the halfway stage. Samuel Dickinson put the British back into the lead by five seconds on the penultimate leg, but the superior swimming of Laura Lindemann and especially that of Taylor Knibb meant the USA and Germany were now neck and neck with the British, with just the final cycling and running phases to be completed.

Knibb, who had crashed four times on wet cobbles in the cycling time trial and also in the individual triathlon, found life more comfortable on her bike this time and took time out of her rivals to emerge with a lead of four seconds. With 100m to go, the three women were level but, as their shoes touched the finishing carpet, Lindemann maintained her speed a little bit better and crossed the line a fraction of a second ahead to give Germany the Olympic title. Great Britain were initially awarded the silver medal based on a still of the video footage but this decision was reversed on further inspection of the official photograph.

The Belgian team were ruled out of the race when Claire Michel fell ill. This was originally believed to be due to E. coli contracted in the swimming portion of the women’s race, but was later confirmed to be a virus.