For three Olympic Games between Beijing and Rio, Great Britain’s male pursuiters were the flagship unit of their velodrome super team.
Other individuals - Victoria Pendleton, Chris Hoy and the Kennys, in particular - were better known, but nothing quite symbolised Team GB’s velodrome supremacy like the aerodynamic whirr of eight wheels and four engines circling the track as one.
And so, nor did anything quite show the extent to which the rest of the world had caught up by Tokyo like the manner in which their 13-year reign as Olympic champions came to an end.
It began on the morning of the Izu Velodrome’s heats, when Ed Clancy, veteran of all three gold-medal winning teams, announced his immediate retirement owing to back trouble.
It ended a few hours later with his replacement, Charlie Tanfield, lying on the track bewildered, after Denmark’s charging train had ridden straight into his rear, not expecting that a British pursuit lineup could splinter so badly that one member would fall onto their front wheel.
Britain were out, of the competition and the medals, for the first time since Atlanta 1996.
On Tuesday, they are certain to right that particular wrong, the quartet of Ethan Hayter, Ollie Wood, Ethan Vernon and Tanfield having ridden to a guaranteed silver when exacting revenge over the world champion Danes on Tuesday evening. That lineup may yet be tweaked, with individual European champion Daniel Bigham in line to come back in. The 32-year-old suffered what he called a “pretty big crash” in training on Saturday, and though he rode in qualifying two days later, was then rested against the Danes. He has experience of sorts of an Olympic final already: having been told by British Cycling that his twin careers as rider and engineer did not fit the programme, he offered his services in the latter field to Denmark in Tokyo, where they won silver, before returning to a more accommodating home fold.
Whichever way Britain lean, though, they will have to produce the ride of their lives to win gold, after watching Australia annihilate the world record in the following heat. Until then, no team in pursuit history had broken the 3:42 barrier. The Aussies not only became the first, but took out the 3:41 mark as well.
"I think it will be fast,” Australia’s Sam Welsford said of the final. “I think it might not be as fast because we had bit of a slipstream coming into the last two laps, but I think with the conditions again, and with the level of the Olympic final, you're going to find that extra boost.
“And I think they'll come out. The Brits will come out really well, and we just have to try answer.”
The women’s team pursuit medals will also be decided tonight, with Britain due in action in the first round this lunchtime having qualified third-fastest yesterday.
"I'm really happy with how it went,” said Elinor Barker. “It was a great time and a national record so cant go too wrong with that.”
Team GB are the world champions in the discipline, but have been forced into a last minute re-jig of their team, after star rider Katie Archibald - a contender to win three gold medals at these Olympics - was ruled out of Paris at the end of June after breaking her leg in a freak garden accident.
The event is the only one of the four ridden so far not to have seen a world record fall on what is said to be a lightning quick track at Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines’s National Velodrome but that is likely to change,, with New Zealand already within less than a half-a-second of the existing mark.
“I purposefully wasn’t looking at other times but then I heard the commentator say how fast New Zealand went,” Josie Knight added. “The track is running really quick.”
