Individual Pursuit (4,000 metres), Men

Britain’s Bradley Wiggins was the defending champion and had won the 2007-08 World Championships, stamping him as the favorite. Wiggins qualified with almost a four-second margin over second placed Hayden Roulston of New Zealand. In the first round, Wiggins and Roulston had the fastest times and met again in the final. The final was close, with Roulston and Wiggins all but tied thru 2,500 metres. But Wiggins had too much strength and pulled ahead to win by over two seconds. Britain continued its track dominance when their other rider, Steven Burke, came from behind against Russian Aleksey Markov to win the bronze medal. Burke had been taken to Beijing only as a reserve but improved his personal best down from 4:31 to 4:20 during training for the Games.

One big story of the pursuit was the seventh-place finisher, Taylor Phinney of the United States. Phinney was only 18 and had been World Junior Champion in 2007 in the road time trial, but was in his first year of racing at the senior international level. However, he had the pedigree as the son of Davis Phinney, bronze medalist in the 1984 team time trial and a winner of two stages at the Tour de France, and Connie Carpenter-Phinney, winner of the first women’s Olympic road race in 1984.