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The velodrome’s untouchable king, and the Australian who dared to dethrone him
By Emma Kemp
If there is any comfort in being beaten by the best, it is having the best acknowledge you are the hardest to beat.
“I haven’t been beaten a lot in the last three or four years, and if I was beaten, it was by Matthew,” Harrie Lavreysen said on Friday night after stopping Matthew Richardson from denying him a second consecutive Olympic sprint gold.
“Seeing him in the final, it was hard. I expected it to be hard. We [finished] really close. He performed crazy well ... a lot of respect to him. He was the best opponent to have in the Olympic final.”
Lavreysen has for so long been the velodrome’s untouchable. The flying Dutchman who won gold at the last Olympics and all of the last five world championships. To draw him in a match sprint spells almost certain death for any rival.
That would have also been the case for Richardson three years ago. The Australian, at his debut Olympics in Tokyo, exited the men’s individual sprint in the 1/32 repechage and watched as the rest tried and failed to dethrone the king.
But much has changed since then. In October 2022, at this very same venue on the outskirts of Paris, the pair raced for the world title, and Lavreysen won.
In November 2023, back at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines velodrome once more, Richardson ended Lavreysen’s perfect record by beating him in the final of a UCI Track Champions League meet. At their next encounter in London, Lavreysen won once more. Both times, there was no more than a whisker in it.
Harrie Lavreysen celebrates just after crossing for men’s sprint gold against Australian Matthew Richardson.Credit: nna\KCampbell
Come Paris 2024, the air of inevitability hanging over the men’s sprint event grew thicker in qualifying when Richardson broke the world record that had stood for five years. He held on to his groundbreaking 9.091 seconds for just a few minutes before Lavreysen broke it again by three-thousandths of a second.
After that, neither lost a race all the way to a final that was looked to be heading towards another chapter in what is blossoming into one of modern sport’s most intriguing cat-and-mouse rivalries.
On this occasion, Lavreysen was the cat, and Richardson was unable to join Ryan Bayley (Athens 2004) as the second Australian to win men’s sprint gold. But silver is still the best result in the two decades since and stands as further evidence of an upward trajectory driving Richardson towards LA 2028.
“I put my best foot forward, I didn’t leave anything out on the track, said the 25-year-old. “Harrie’s a really tough opponent. He’s one of the greatest sprinters we’ve ever seen on this planet.
“It wasn’t that many years ago I was looking up at Harrie, and just in awe of the gap - that he was so much better than everyone else. So, to be within a few inches of beating him at the highest level in the world is a great achievement for me, and I’ll use this for motivation to come back.
“He definitely sets the benchmark for other riders to chase. Someone like that shows you what’s possible; it’s easy to use him as a target for the future.”
Scott Gardner, Australia’s head coach of acceleration and action, described the 27-year-old Lavreysen as “the fastest man that ever lived”.
“You’ve just seen the greatest sprinter ever,” Gardner said. “Hats off to Matt Richardson, how far he’s come in the last four years ... becoming that consistent sprinter who’s going to be there to challenge for many years to come.”
Richardson, who added the silver to his team sprint bronze earlier in the week, will contest the opening keirin heats alongside teammate Matt Glaetzer on Saturday. Earlier on Friday, Kristina Clonan won a women’s sprint repechage heat to secure her place in the quarter-finals.