Team Sprint, Men

The order of finish at the last three World Championships had been the same – France 1st and Great Britain 2nd. Great Britain led the qualifiers in Beijing, led by Chris Hoy and Jason Kenny, who would later place 1-2 in the match sprint. There is no official world record for the event as it is always three laps of the track, and tracks differ in size. But the British qualifying time of 42.950 was the fastest ever recorded for a 250 metre track. As expected, the final matched the two long-time rivals. Britain’s Jamie Staff started out the final by pulling ahead of Gregory Bauge on the first lap. Kenny then took over and increased the lead slightly against Kevin Sireau. The final lap matched long-time rivals Hoy and Arnaud Tournant. But Hoy was virtually unstoppable in Beijing and Tournant lost even more ground, Britain winning the gold medal by 0.523 seconds, a large margin for the team sprint. By comparison, in the bronze medal match, Germany edged Australia by only 8/1000th’s of a second. Hoy would go on to win all three track sprint gold medals on the track in Beijing – sprint, keirin, and team sprint.