In the bronze medal race, the British team of Elinor Barker, Josie Knight, Anna Morris and Jessica Roberts finished more than a second clear of Italy in the final half of the race to finish on the podium for the fourth Summer Games in a row.

In the men’s pursuit, Australia’s Sam Welsford, Oliver Bleddyn, Conor Leahy and Kelland O’Brien won their first gold medal in twenty years by beating Britain in the final at the Vélodrome National de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines.

The American women’s pursuit program has similarly been chasing gold since the 2012 London Games, when it finished second to Britain. It lost a rematch in Rio de Janeiro four years later, and then in Tokyo, the U.S. had to beat Canada for the bronze medal.

He arrived at the velodrome outside Paris with cautious optimism, but was supported by a squad that already had a pair of medals. Dygert bounced back from a crash and rallied in the rain to win bronze in the time trial, and last weekend Faulkner charged through the final kilometres to win the Olympic road race, the first time an American had competed in 40 years.

After the qualifying rounds in which the USA and England faced off in the semi-finals, Dygert gained a lead of about half a second over her opponent towards the middle of the 4,000-meter race, taking the lead on the final lap and carrying the race to victory.

Then it was New Zealand’s turn, and the team that came first in the qualifiers beat the Italians by nearly three seconds in the semi-finals.

The men’s pursuit podium was set to be shaken up after Australia cruised through the heats and then beat reigning Olympic champions Italy to advance to the finals in a world record-breaking time of 3:40.730.

Their opponent was familiar: Britain. Their three-time Olympic gold medal streak ended with a seventh-place finish at the Tokyo Games, but the Britons overcame world champions from Denmark to return to the gold medal race.

The two teams were separated by less than two tenths of a second for almost the entire distance, with the Australians crossing the finish line in 3:42.067. The British team of Daniel Bigham, Ethan Hayter, Charlie Tanfield and Oliver Wood had a problem near the finish line that cost them several seconds, and came away with the silver medal.

The Italians, consisting of Simone Consonni, Filippo Ganna, Francesco Lamon and Jonathan Milan, who recovered in the last 1000 meters, won the bronze medal, while the Danish team, consisting of Tobias Hansen, Niklas Larsen, Carl-Frederik Bevort and Rasmus Pedersen, was disbanded.

“We didn’t expect the level to be this high at these Olympic Games,” Lamon said. “We trained very, very hard in Italy and had a very, very, good time, but when we came here it wasn’t enough for gold.”

Early on the third day of Olympic track cycling, the men’s sprint race began with a heat of 200 meters, in which riders built up speed for about two laps and then tried to cover that distance as quickly as possible.

On a blazing-fast, hot track where records fell faster than medals were awarded, the world record fell twice. Australian Matthew Richardson snatched it from Olympic champion Harrie Lavreysen in 9.091 seconds, but the Dutchman — fresh from winning team sprint gold the night before — took it back a few minutes later in 9.088.

The women’s keirin race, in which six riders run three laps on the back of a motorised motorbike called a derny before being released and forced to sprint three laps, also got underway with New Zealand favourite Ellesse Andrews, German stars Lea Friedrich and Emma Hinze and British star Emma Finucane all cruising through their opening heats without any problems.

The medals for the women’s keirin and men’s multidisciplinary omnium will be announced on Thursday night.

“It will be a bit of the same as the other championships – fast-paced and the big guns will be there,” said Belgian Fabio van den Bossche, who cited Hayter, New Zealand’s Aaron Gate and Olympic bronze medallist Elia Viviani of Italy as all favourites. “There will be many candidates for the podium.”