Canada’s men’s team pursuit squad reflect on first-ever World Cup gold medal

Canada sits first overall in the World Cup standings after two rounds

Philippe Tremblay November 13, 2016

Canada’s men’s team pursuit squad of Aidan Caves, Adam Jamieson, Jay Lamoureux, Bayley Simpson and Ed Veal took a historic win in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands on Saturday. The win was Canada’s first-ever in the men’s team pursuit at a World Cup and marks considerable progress in the NextGen MTE program which was launched in 2014 with the goal of being medal contenders in the men’s team pursuit at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. The win moves the squad into first overall in the World Cup standings after taking bronze in the first round in Glasgow.

“Our plan for the first two World Cups was to have a clean run,” explained Ian Melvin, the national men’s endurance coach. “We wanted to get the points to qualify for worlds so we didn’t have to depend on the third round of the World Cup in Cali.”

We're still pinching ourselves! What a ride. With an average of of just 20y/o, the future is bright @CanTrackCycling pic.twitter.com/OWrYHQKYp9

— Toronto V.C. (@TorontoVeloClub) November 13, 2016

Canada took the historic win against the Belgians who went out fast but faded in the final kilometre. “It’s a pretty crazy day,” said Aidan Caves. “It’s actually been a pretty crazy month since nationals, probably one of the best ever. We were aware that they [Belgium] were probably going to go out hot, but we didn’t panic because we all knew that we were the stronger team. We knew that if we stayed strong that we have consistently had a faster final kilo than most of the other teams, so that’s what we focussed on; to come back from the little bit they were up on us. It worked out pretty well to plan.”

The team of Caves, Jamieson, Lamoureux and Simpson riding in the final showed composure and despite being down by over a second after the first 1,000 metres worked at bringing the gap down to three-tenths of a second at the midway point. Canada posted its fastest split of the race in the final 1,000 metres to take the win in four minutes and 2.144 seconds with a winning margin of over four seconds on the Belgians.

“We’ve got five guys here who can execute, so we are using everyone to have some fresh legs for each ride,” said Simpson. “This was my first trip with the team, and the first ride I got to do was in Glasgow for the bronze medal. It was nerve-wracking but we executed it that day and then we were able to come here and do it again.

Team behind the team. So proud of this group & what we've accomplished. For everyone else missing – thank you! @CanTrackCycling pic.twitter.com/2BgHv9sDVD

— Ian Melvin (@IanMelvin78) November 12, 2016

“I can’t even put it into words, really,” Simpson said. “The time was good; we looked at the past times here when the world championships were here in 2011 and the winning team was a high 4:01, so we are pretty happy with our time.”

With the win, Canada moves into first overall in the overall standings with 1,800 points. Great Britain sits at 1,700 points after winning the first round in Glasgow with France, the bronze medal team in Apeldoorn, sitting third also with 1,700 points.