Company we’re starting off with women’s team pursuiting and after the qualifiers yesterday it’s belarus who finished 16 qualification up against poland who were seventh now this is quite evenly balanced their qualification times were pretty similar they both had different phases where they had their strengths
And it’s an odd one really but when you look over the full distance and we remind you it’s four kilometers now then you can vary in terms of your strength within the discipline of the the full distance of four kilometers uh those who are more endurance minded maybe uh we’ll
Start to show their hand a little bit later on others with a great deal of explosive strength may well try and build up a lead at the beginning um it’s basically head-to-head at the moment only rounds three and four will be will have a chance to go for gold and silver
Medals whoever loses that will go into a pool and then the fastest of all of those here will of course get lebron so there’s something to go for joe even in these opening couple of heats where they cannot go for gold and silver but um belarus poland canada and switzerland
Will be hoping that the bronze stays alive for them yeah they will so there was a change in regulations a few years ago meaning that if you qualified anywhere down to eighth place you could still potentially find yourself racing for a bronze medal if you ride a quick
Enough round in this what we call the first round of racing technically your second race at the championships of the team pursuit um paid off well for us one year we qualified in fifth and end up getting a bronze medal but traditionally it used to always be everyone qualified
Top two had raced for gold and third and fourth of race for bronze but now we’ve got this um different qualification system which has been here a few years now meaning that every competition has three rounds of racing but it does open up the opportunities for teams that
Didn’t have quite such a strong qualifying ride to still be able to come back the next day and turn it around but which we do see happen quite a lot you know it’s surprising you can often just have a poor riding qualify it does all quite come together your legs always
Feel different on race day all the sensations always feel a little bit different once you’ve got that first ride out the way go away analyze it come back the next day and often it can be a far better ride that you put together so
It’s a good way to get to give sort of more opportunities to get into that bronze medal final just to get uh the variation in the shoes here some laced up um always quite often you see those who are coming out of the pneumatic gates with laces but uh
That’s given the lie here by uh by uh poland nonetheless get yourselves dialed in because this is important the balance of the teams may well have changed as well let’s remind ourselves from yesterday that looks like a full start to me uh but they wobbled away um poland um more of
The less experience of the two teams here i think but belarus as well still with some youngsters that looked like a cagey uh shaky start um i must admit but uh let’s see how it pans out right now poland’s still with the advantage at least for this the time being let’s have
A look at it’s pans out right now and in fact it is uh enhanced i think it was bella worcester wobbled out the gates here poland looked better dialed in and you can look down the line of belarus as well with the green accent it’s pretty similar kit but uh
With uh some green accents to the belarussians and uh i’m afraid they are rather in the wake of a team that look much better dialed in yeah so you said the slightly shaky start often we’ve seen that happen a couple of times this competition with riders not being quite happy with who’s
Held them at the start but look a huge gap here for poland 2.2 seconds just three laps into the race they did start a lot quicker in qualifying they had the fifth fastest opening kilo in qualifying ended up finishing seventh overall whereas belarus finished really strongly
So it’s a long odd way up there it’s it’s four kilometers 16 laps and just holding around that 2.2 second mark moment 109 opening kilo there for poland well i think we may well have uh the warning there’s a there’s a train coming through and uh the team that’s going to
Have to stand inside the red line as you will uh will be i’m afraid belarus because poland are on their marks at the moment and we’ve only we’re only what uh 1375 into this one a little bit further than that right now of course but it
Looks like poland are going to make the catch here let’s see how close they get as you say it started very strongly yesterday um joe and we’ve been talking about these peaks and troughs within the run of four kilometers and the the run can come to you late on but
It looks over for belarus and quite frankly poland will be getting a bit of an assist here so it may well be the very fact that they’re being offered up this uh arrow advantage for the time being they still have to come round because they haven’t caught them too
Late in fact it almost looks like there has been a response from belarus here which will serve poland ever better i think and what i’m trying to get to is that it could be to the advantage of poland if they do get narrow assist and close in
On them late on it could accent their time here oh definitely and that’s a reason why you might see some teams in in a final situation or on a first round like this where you’ve got the two teams on the track deliberately going out with a faster start because then you can just
About get yourself in the slipstream even if it’s a pace that you think might not be quite maintainable for the whole ride you’ve got this advantage here so here they’ll just be able to see the belarus team entering the banking as they exit the previous banking and that makes a huge difference psychologically
But also in terms of the error effects they will still be getting an advantage from that slipstream of the belarus team even though they’re still sort of a quarter of a lap away so they will be making a nice big difference then they are well up on their time from
Qualifying yesterday we’re about to reach the three kilometer mark either way this race isn’t about winning or losing it’s about recording as fast a time as possible if they want to have a chance to race in the bronze medal later on the seat well i think they’ve got a
Chance uh more than a chance at the moment the way they’re closing at the moment both teams down to three as you can see so the spare riders shed you can’t afford to have anybody else come off the back and we were reminding ourselves that
Ill fortune can be w at any time so we don’t wish that on any team but it’s been holding here around three and a half seconds for quite some time so belarus in the mid part of the run clearly showing their strength but good strategy from poland to get out there
And close down their opponents and have that error advantage we were talking about it’s holding station at the moment modestly swinging but around about that four second mark just point two off it as you can see thereabouts and in fact now we do go over four so the gap now is
Being accented and this is perfect for poland they can start driving into the hole at the tunnel that’s being provided for them if you will and get themselves a half decent time here so let’s see belle’s ringing upon everybody and poland about to uh almost finish their task at the back of the
Track with belarus still with uh about three quarters to go as you can see good work from poland they stopped the clock belarus coming across the line now we’ll see what the deficit was they found another 0.2 actually they retrieved a little bit there but poland
Will be reasonably happy with that is it enough though to race off later yeah well they should be very happy with that it’s seven seconds quicker than they qualified in yesterday they did a 429.4 yesterday so 422.6 almost seven seconds quicker so they should be delighted with that improvement there uh
Really really good to see that and i see them celebrating uh it will be a sort of agonizing weight now to see if that will be quick enough to get them into the bronze medal ride um it could be a case of the track is running quicker this
Evening and that’s why we’re seeing some faster times but this is our first heat up so we’ll see what the remaining teams are able to produce yes um weather as well at this time of year is quite mercurial um actually barometers you get the idea yes it um