Olympics track cycling: Great Britain win men’s silver and women’s bronze in team pursuit

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Olympics track cycling: Great Britain win men’s silver and women’s bronze in team pursuit

The GB women’s quartet was without its taliswoman Katie Archibald, a two-time Olympic champion and five-time world champion, who was ruled out just weeks before the Games after breaking her leg in a

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The riders have previously spoken of their shock at the news and the need to reset, but in Barker and Knight, they had two riders with plenty of Olympic pedigree.

They had showed no sign of their disrupted build-up in qualifying on Tuesday, setting the third fastest time in a new national record.

They lowered that best again, by almost two seconds, to 4:04.908 in the first round earlier on Wednesday but it was not enough to secure a place in the gold-medal final as they came up short against the ******* States.

Against Italy they trailed for more than three-quarters of the race, at times by more than a second.

But with fewer than 500 metres to go, and with Knight – who alongside Barker won silver in Tokyo – at the front, they overturned that deficit with Italy lacking the legs after their fast start to push back again.

GB stopped the clock in 4:06.382, with the Italians crossing more than two and a half seconds later.

“I could not be more proud of these ******,” Knight told BBC Sport.

“Six weeks ago when Katie broke her ankle, I felt like my Olympic dream had gone down the drain a little bit after committing to team pursuit.

“But we re-strategised, we brought Jess into the team and I could not be more proud of us getting on an Olympic podium.”

It marks a special occasion for Llanishen High School in Cardiff. Barker and Morris were in the same year at the school, while Barker’s younger sister Megan, the reserve rider here in Paris, was also a pupil.

The ******* States beat New Zealand in the final to win gold for the first time in history, marking a second Olympic title of the Games for road race champion Kristen Faulkner.

Elsewhere in Wednesday’s racing, Jack Carlin and Hamish Turnbull progressed to the quarter-finals of the men’s individual sprint, which take place on Thursday.

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