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Jack Carlin, Ed Lowe, and Hamish Turnbull won Olympic men’s team sprint silver for Great Britain as pre-race favourites the Netherlands broke the world record twice on their way to gold.
In a repeat of the result from the Tokyo Games, the Dutch trio of Harrie Lavreysen, Jeffrey Hoogland and Roy van den Berg retained their title, breaking their own world record in the first round and then again in the final, winning in a time of 40.949 seconds
Although beaten in the final, there were smiles and celebrations from the British squad, who had been well aware of the task they faced against this all-conquering Dutch team, who have won the world title in five of the last six years.
Carlin, 27, was part of the squad that took silver behind the Dutch three years ago alongside Sir Jason Kenny – now the coach – and the retired Ryan Owens, but this was by far the biggest result in the careers of Turnbull, 25, and Lowe, just 20.
“I think we’ve executed three really solid races there and can be proud of that as a team,” said Carlin.
“We knew that we would be up against it coming into it but we stuck to our process and stuck to what we wanted from each race.
“We executed it as a three brilliantly even when little things were going on throughout the day, we really focused and knuckled down. It’s obviously these two’s first Olympics and both of them stepped up to the occasion and have a medal to show for it.”
Turnbull, known as the “Morpeth Mish”, has been on the GB pathways since the age of 14, moving on to the elite programme in 2021, winning his first elite medals at the Commonwealth Games in 2022, but Lowe is still new to the team, only making his elite debut at last year’s World Cup in Milton, Canada.
Turnbull said: “We came here expecting to fight for third, so as soon as we got into that gold final all stress was off and we could just try to express what we could do and enjoy it.
“It’s a really nice feeling racing in front of this crowd, so many people on our shoulder and big thanks to everyone at home who’s cheering us on as well, we really appreciate it.”
The Dutch came through the first round with a time of 41.191, breaking the previous world record they had set back at the World Championships in Berlin in early 2020.
Earlier, Britain booked their place in the men’s team pursuit final although, like the sprinters, they will face a tough ask against an Australian squad who took more than a second off the world record in Tuesday’s first-round action.
With Charlie Tanfield stepping in for Dan Bigham, who is feeling the impact of a training crash on Friday, Ethan Hayter put in a huge turn to help Team GB finish in 3mins 42.151 secs, but they then watched from track centre as Australia stopped the clock at a blistering 3:40.730.
The women’s team pursuit squad, racing here without the injured Katie Archibald, were third fastest in qualifying as Elinor Barker, Josie Knight, Anna Morris and Jessica Roberts set a time of 4:06.710, two seconds off an outstanding time from New Zealand.
