Sprint, Men

Earlier in the year, Michel Rousseau (FRA) had won the sprint World Championships and was favored in Melbourne. The 1955 and 1956 runner up Jorge Batiz (ARG) was not in Melbourne. Future World Champion in the event (1958-59), Valentino Gasparella, was in Melbourne but did not contest the sprint, riding only the team pursuit. Nineteen riders started the event. Six first round heats followed by six repêchages qualified 12 riders for the quarter-finals. From the quarter-finals onward, all matches were best two of three races. The semi-finals came down to Rousseau, Italian Guglielmo Pesenti, and two riders from Oceania. In the first heat, Rousseau defeated New Zealander Warren Johnston easily in two straight races. The second heat had Pesenti and Dick Ploog (AUS). They split the first two races, and in the decider, Ploog took the lead on the last back straight as they started the sprint. He swept down inside Pesenti who passed him quickly, and Ploog stood up. But he did not raise his hand for a protest, and did not actually finish the course on the track. However, the Australian team manager protested that Pesenti had cut Ploog off when he passed him. Later that evening, the commissaries ruled in Pesenti’s favor, but Australia appealed again and it was not until the next morning that the final ruling came back that there had been no foul. In the final, Rousseau won comfortably in two straight races, with 11.4 his 200 metre time for each race, equaling the Olympic record both times. Rousseau was again amateur sprint World Champion in 1957 and then turned professional. In 1958 he won the professional world title, and was runner-up in 1959 and 1961 to the redoubtable Antonio Maspes (ITA).