The heartbreak of fourth had turn into all too a well-known a sense for Australia’s Matthew Glaetzer on the Olympic Games, in spite of everything he had lined up within the bronze medal showdown for the boys’s Team Sprint in London, Rio and Tokyo after which walked away empty-handed each time. Paris, nevertheless, was completely different.
The Australian squad of Glaetzer, Matthew Richardson and Leigh Hoffman lined up at Vélodrome National de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines to tackle the house city favourites of France, who had beat them to bronze in Tokyo, however this time they turned the tables. Australia claimed bronze and eventually Glaetzer had the medal he had fought so exhausting for during the last 12 years, clinching it in what is anticipated to be his final Olympic Games.
“After Tokyo, I used to be very near giving the game away, however I caught at it. I imply, clearly overcoming most cancers, an enormous harm within the lead as much as Tokyo, after which for our Tokyo preparation to not go properly, it was fairly powerful,” stated the 31-year-old who was recognized with thyroid most cancers in 2019. “And elite sport could be fairly brutal when you do not get the end result that you simply intention for. And I pushed by it and got here to this Olympics with the teammates that I had, and knew we might do one thing nice for Australia.”
Of course the dream was to struggle for gold within the Team Sprint, however after the rounds had performed out it was Netherlands and Great Britain that secured the suitable to battle for the highest two spots, which meant bronze was the one medal in attain. Though with a primary spherical efficiency of 42.336, Australia knew it must do higher to keep away from lacking out on a medal all-together for a fourth time in a row.
“Leigh and Richo are simply so quick, and so they had been lighting it on fireplace in entrance of me, and I wasn’t fairly there, and I knew that we could not afford to do this once more within the closing and wasn’t prepared to danger that,” stated Glaetzer after the occasion. “I used to be fairly assured that we might go quicker if we blended it up and to unleash their horsepower within the again finish with some kind of a good first lap that I might do.”
Glaetzer moved to starter duties within the decider, Hoffman turned the second man after which it was Richardson’s flip. The end result was a bronze medal securing time of 41.597, with the French squad coming in behind with 41.993.
“Very happy with them to ship that, and us as a workforce to to make that decision and to take the danger,” stated Glaetzer. “Because, yeah, we knew that we weren’t going to depart any query unanswered, and we had been prepared to do something to win that medal, and that meant rolling the cube, mixing it up, and it paid off.”
That means it doesn’t matter what occurs subsequent within the remaining contests, with Glaetzer additionally on the beginning listing for the Men’s Sprint and the Men’s Keirin, he’ll get to stroll away as an Olympic Games medallist.
“This bronze is sort of a gold to me,” Glaetzer stated in an AusCycling launch.
“I’ve lived by a number of heartbreak – in each workforce dash Olympic closing, we have been on the shedding facet within the bronze closing,” he stated in France. “It’s been very powerful, however to lastly come out on the winners facet of it was fairly particular.”
