How Australian men’s pursuit team broke world record on the way to gold
THIS time last year Australian track cycling coach Tim Decker called his riders together during a routine training session at the Adelaide Super-Drome and told them his dream: “We can challenge for the world record.”
THIS time last year Australian track cycling coach Tim Decker called his riders together during a routine training session at the Adelaide Super-Drome and told them his dream.
“I said to the boys ‘I think we can challenge for the world record at the Comm Games’,” Decker said.
Secretly it had been his dream ever since he took the job as men’s track endurance coach in 2013 and his riders had come agonisingly close so many times in the five years before Thursday night when Australia became the first nation to go sub 3mins 50 secs for 4km.
Kelland O’Brien, Sam Welsford, Leigh Howard and Alex Porter combined for 3:49.8 to win gold in Brisbane after Jordan Kerby rode with them in qualifying.
AERODYNAMIC HAIR: GOLD AT THE FRONT, PARTY AT THE BACK
So in the wake of a phenomenal performance when it all finally came together, Decker had to fight back tears when asked what it meant to him.
“For me ... it probably means belief,” he said before a long, silent pause where he was unable to get the next words out.
“This is not an overnight thing that’s happened, it’s not even the last year.
“When I got the job the first target was to get under 3:50 and that’s over five years now, and to be honest, the coaches before me all had a dream of cracking the 3:50 barrier as well and that’s not just Australia.
“This has been a long time coming and there have been so many people who have had so much impact along the way.
“It’s a piece of history, first team, first time and it happened on Australian soil.”
After the race, superstar Bradley Wiggins, whose Great Britain team owned the previous record, posted a message of congratulations on Instagram.
“Records are there to be broken, huge congratulations to the Australian team pursuit squad, awesome ride guys,” Wiggins wrote.
The record may have caught some by surprise but not Decker.
In the lead up to the Games, he had seen things from his riders he hadn’t seen before that made him believe it would happen.
“There were moments on the track in regards to efforts and times they’d been doing, but there were also moments off the track of belief, their ability to control their emotions, the camaraderie of the team and respect the guys have for each other,” he said.
“Yes we were in a bit of the unknown seeing the times they’d been doing in training but when you go that far into the unknown it was like ‘what can this actually be on the day?’ and regardless of what you do in training you still have to make it happen on the day. And there’s a lot to that.”
It was well after midnight on Friday when Decker finally got to bed but the riders and staff did come together for dinner after they’d finished drug testing, media commitments and recovery.
“We all caught up and ate together and had lots of smiles, but we enjoyed the moment in the moment, as it happened,” Decker said.
“One thing I’ve always tried to say to these guys is be natural, don’t be fake about things, and they enjoyed the moment for what it was.”
If ever Australia was going to break the 3:50 barrier it appeared it would be in 2016 when they had Alex Edmondson, Jack Bobridge and Michael Hepburn — who have all been individual pursuit world champions in their own right — riding with Welsford.
But that team rode 3:51.008 to win silver in Rio, and has been dramatically transformed since then.
Welsford was the only one of five riders from Thursday’s qualifying and final to have been at the last Olympics just 18 months ago.
Decker won’t talk about Rio anymore where Australia lost a heartbreaking final to Great Britain.
“Of course it hurt but I don’t want to keep going back to the past,” he said.
Instead he’s looking to the future and on Thursday he watched four Games debutants create history.
Even more staggering was that the world record — when absolutely everything has to go right — happened after a restart when Australia’s riders exerted maximum energy to get out of the start gate in a big gear and around the first bend, only for England to false start.
“It’s the building of the group, and we must never forget the team pursuit is a team race,” Decker said.
“You have to manage four guys on the night but the impact of the other four, five or six guys who have trained with the group and pushed them to a higher level — Nick Yallouris, Rohan Wight, Cam Meyer, Cam Scott, Josh Harrison — and the impact of the staff, all those things are so important.
“Yeah the group has changed but the aim and values have always stayed the same.
“Riders will come and go but the most important thing is the desire and how much they want to do it, and you’ve seen a guy last night (Leigh Howard) who has been written off by pretty much the professional road cycling scene, and probably written off in his past on the track.
“But for him to come back and be a part of that team last night and contribute the way he did, it’s pretty special.
“But that’s because he wanted it and he focused on one thing and he wanted to be a part of our group.”
It wasn’t just Howard who is an amazing storyline from the triumphant team.
There was 19-year-old O’Brien from Victoria who is only just old enough to represent Australia at senior international level.
“Of course you’re staggered and most people are, but he’s a special, special person. Amazing, what a guy,” Decker said.
“Strong physically, mentally, a great character, they call him the young pup but he’s actually the captain.”
Then there’s the team’s flamboyant starter in Porter who decided there was nothing more Australian than growing a mullet for a home Commonwealth Games.
“He’s got an uncanny knack of bringing a calmness across the group, and he knows how to put it together on the day,” Decker said.
“He’s the guy who gets the team up to speed so he takes all that workload early, and he switches the mind on and he’s ever reliable in the job that he does.”
Welsford has been the mainstay of the team for the past four years and after the Rio final sat in the middle of the velodrome with Decker plotting a way forward.
“He’s the stabiliser of the team. He is the man that puts the rest of the guys at ease, he’s the general of the team who has amazing feel, is aware of what’s going on with his teammates at all times and knows how to perform and perform under pressure,” Decker said.
“He’s one of our most gifted athletes on a velodrome and what a racer.”
And finally there’s Kerby who rode qualifying but sat out the final after only coming back to the track last year.
“Jordan is the fighter of the group, he is not the most gifted athlete in the world but boy that guy knows how to fight, he’s so determined,” Decker said.
“And for him to nearly be at retirement and turn it around and come back and win a world title in an individual event, then bring that across to the team pursuit has been a huge step in under a year. But once again he’s wanted to be there and wanted to do it.”
As much as the world record will be celebrated, Australia is under no illusions that the England team they beat for gold on Thursday night will be vastly different to the Great Britain they will face for Olympic gold in Tokyo in 2020.
Australia has not owned the team pursuit Olympic title since 2004, and while they have their eyes on the bigger prize, Decker won’t let that overshadow what deserves to be celebrated right now.
“At the moment enjoy what they’ve done and then they can take some belief out of it,” he said.
MEN’S TEAM PURSUIT WORLD RECORD PROGRESSION
4:03.8 - Australia (Stuart O’Grady, Brett Aitken, Tim O’Shannessy, Billy Joe Shearsby) 1993, Hamar.
4:00.9 - Italy, Manchester, 1996.
4:00.8 - Ukraine, Sydney, 2000.
3:59.7 - Germany, Sydney, 2000.
3:59.5 - Australia (Luke Roberts, Mark Renshaw, Peter Dawson, Graeme Brown) Manchester, 2002.
3:57.3 - Australia (Luke Roberts, Brett Lancaster, Peter Dawson, Graeme Brown) Stuttgart, 2003.
3:56.6 - Australia (Luke Roberts, Brett Lancaster, Brad McGee, Graeme Brown) Athens, 2004.
3:56.3 - Great Britain, Manchester, 2008.
3:55.2 - Great Britain, Beijing, 2008.
3:53.3 - Great Britain, Beijing, 2008.
3:53.2 - Great Britain, Melbourne, 2012.
3:51.6 - Great Britain, London, 2012.
3:50.5 - Great Britain, Rio de Janeiro, 2016.
3:50.2 - Great Britain, Rio de Janeiro, 2016.
3:49.8 - Australia (Leigh Howard, Alex Porter, Sam Welsford, Kelland O’Brien), Brisbane, 2018.
MEARES REVEALS SECRETS TO FAST TRACK
WITH help from Anna Meares and Cyclone Iris, Brisbane’s new velodrome has lived up to its lightning fast reputation with three Commonwealth and one world record falling on the first day of racing and the prospect of more to come.
Meares helped design the venue that is named in her honour and was watching from the stands as Australia won three gold medals to open the Commonwealth Games on Thursday.
“The architect came to Adelaide to meet me when it was in the early stages to get to know what an athlete requires from a velodrome to put air flow and fans in, so I just made them aware of things,” Meares said yesterday.
“It was a very small input but it was nice to be consulted.”
But the riders also had a little help from Cyclone Iris which has been menacing the Queensland coast this week.
“It was always going to be fast, but with Cyclone Iris — even though she’s now gone into a rain depression — she really brought in the low barometric pressure and high humidity which we got three of the four environmental factors to help make it fast,” Meares said.
Meares was all smiles from the stands watching on with sister Kerrie as her former teammates Kaarle McCulloch and Stephanie Morton won the women’s team sprint in Games record time.
“I don’t know why but I was a little bit stressed and emotional getting to the velodrome but once I was there and settled in it was actually a lot of fun to watch such really good performances,” she said.
“I always cheered for the team anyway so it was cool to do it from a different side, and for every Commonwealth and world record to fall on a track that has my name on it, you can’t ask for much more.
“And it was a phenomenal ride from our men’s team pursuit who broke the world record.
“The scenes last night were just ecstatic and I have goosebumps just thinking about it, and to see the women’s team pursuit also win gold by catching their New Zealand counterparts was amazing.”
Originally published as How Australian men’s pursuit team broke world record on the way to gold
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