Tokyo 2020 Olympics track day two: More records tumble, another shock crash and two silvers for Team GB

Germany almost catching Great Britain in the Olympic team pursuit final

(Image credit: Getty Images)

published 3 August 2021

The second day of the track cycling in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games was, once again, very eventful with multiple world and Olympic records falling as well as a bizarre crash.

The action started with a bang with Team GB coming out and breaking the world record in the women's team pursuit against the USA which put them through into the gold medal final. But moments after the race Katie Archibald rode into the back of Neah Evans as the teams chatted on their way back to track centre. Fortunately, everyone was okay.

The men's team sprint came next with the favourites, the Netherlands, topping the tables in qualifying with them eventually going through to the final. The qualifying for the finals was spectacular as Australia came out and broke the Olympic record, this was quickly followed by Great Britain breaking the record straight away but that lasted about as long as the Netherlands came out and broke it again.

In the gold medal fight for the men's team sprint, between the Dutch and the British teams it was indeed the Netherlands who stormed to the top with another Olympic record that edged close to their own world record set before the Games. Great Britain had similar issues to Australia with Jason Kenny just becoming disengaged from his team-mates going into the key part of the race which meant they finished around four seconds back, having to settle for the silver medal as the Netherlands took gold.

In the men's team pursuit medal qualifiers we saw an amazing penultimate race between New Zealand and Italy. The Italians were trailing the New Zealanders going into the final lap by a good margin but world record holder in the individual pursuit, Filippo Ganna, took the last two laps from the front and pulled the gap back to not only win by 0.09 of a second but to also knock over two seconds out of the old world record set by Denmark in 2020.

Unfortunately, Danish rider Frederik Madsen had his head down powering along and did not know Tanfield was just ahead of him. He rode full tilt into the back of the Brit, bringing them both down heading into the final lap, ending the contest. The riders had to wait until after all the other races had taken place to find out their fate with the Danish being allowed to go through to the final to face Italy and battle for gold with Great Britain unlikely to be going for bronze.

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Hi, I'm one of Cycling Weekly's content writers for the web team responsible for writing stories on racing, tech, updating evergreen pages as well as the weekly email newsletter. Proud Yorkshireman from the UK's answer to Flanders, Calderdale, go check out the cobbled climbs!

I started watching cycling back in 2010, before all the hype around London 2012 and Bradley Wiggins at the Tour de France. In fact, it was Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck's battle in the fog up the Tourmalet on stage 17 of the Tour de France.

It took me a few more years to get into the journalism side of things, but I had a good idea I wanted to get into cycling journalism by the end of year nine at school and started doing voluntary work soon after. This got me a chance to go to the London Six Days, Tour de Yorkshire and the Tour of Britain to name a few before eventually joining Eurosport's online team while I was at uni, where I studied journalism. Eurosport gave me the opportunity to work at the world championships in Harrogate back in the awful weather.

After various bar jobs, I managed to get my way into Cycling Weekly in late February of 2020 where I mostly write about racing and everything around that as it's what I specialise in but don't be surprised to see my name on other news stories.

When not writing stories for the site, I don't really switch off my cycling side as I watch every race that is televised as well as being a rider myself and a regular user of the game Pro Cycling Manager. Maybe too regular.

My bike is a well used Specialized Tarmac SL4 when out on my local roads back in West Yorkshire as well as in northern Hampshire with the hills and mountains being my preferred terrain.