The velodrome of records

Sam Welsford dismounted his bike and looked at the record time his Australian teammates had just set in the men’s pursuit.

“I’m afraid,” Welsford said with a smile, “we’ll have to go faster to get the gold.”

That’s because after two days of cycling at the National Velodrome, world records are falling at a dizzying rate.

The record in the women’s team sprint fell five times on Monday before the British trio of Sophie Capewell, Emma Finucane and Katy Marchant edged out New Zealand in the final.

The following day, the Dutch men’s sprint team (Roy van den Berg, Harrie Lavreysen and Jeffrey Hoogland) twice broke their own world record on their way to gold.

“The track is very fast and the temperatures are very high, so we expected that,” said Hoogland.

Then there was Welsford and his team-mates Oliver Bleddyn, Conor Leahy and Kelland O’Brien, who not only beat the world record set by Italy to win the gold medal in Tokyo, but shattered it. Their time of 3 minutes 40.730 seconds was almost two seconds faster than the previous mark, putting them into the final against rivals Team Great Britain yesterday.

The track

The velodrome being raced on is 250 metres long, like most tracks, but has a constant radius of 23 metres with 43-degree banking on the corners (and exceptionally smooth transitions between straights and corners) that create a slingshot effect.

Additionally, the temperatures in which the race is held are ideal when track cyclists are trying to set fast times.

The reason is simple: warm air is less dense than cold air. So when a sprinter like Dutchman Hoogland pumps out 2,000 watts of power, he can move a little faster because there are fewer molecules in the air to offer resistance.

“We have a good track temperature, a really low pressure, and that favors those fast times,” said Australian Welsford.— AP