Team Pursuit (4,000 metres), Men

Two of the four defending Olympic champions in the team pursuit, Great Britain’s Ed Clancy and Geraint Thomas, returned in attempt to win the title again on home soil. Paul Manning had retired from competition to coach and Bradley Wiggins had saved his strength to train for other events, so they were replaced by Steven Burke and Peter Kennaugh. This quartet had proven successful in the lead up to the Games, winning the 2012 World Championships in world record time. Many felt that the Olympics would be a rematch of the World Championships, with the strong Australian team racing against the Britons for gold while the Russians challenged New Zealand for bronze.

The qualification round got the event off to a blistering start, with the British squad shaving nearly a second off of their world record time from earlier in the year. The only minor surprise was that Denmark outclassed the Russians by nearly a second in the qualifications, finishing fourth overall. Russia got its revenge in the semi-finals, however, beating the Danes by nearly two-tenths of a second and confirming many analysts’ predictions about the competitors in the final matches. In fact, it turned out that the podium results were exactly the same as in the World Championships: New Zealand took home bronze in a victory over Russia and Great Britain took nearly another second off of the world record that they had set the day before on their way to winning the gold medal, leaving Australia once again with silver.