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Canada’s women’s team pursuit squad to race for bronze in Rio

Tune in at 4pm EDT for the afternoon session at the Rio velodrome to watch Canada face New Zealand in the bronze medal matchup

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In a morning that saw two world records broken by the Americans and then the team from Great Britain, Canada qualified for the bronze medal match in the women’s team pursuit. Two days ago in qualifying, Canada advanced with the fourth fastest time. Great Britain set a new world record with their qualifying time of 4:13.26.

In a tough matchup against the team from Great Britain on Saturday morning, Canada set a time of 4:15.63 setting a new Canadian record and qualifying for the bronze medal round against New Zealand who advanced with a time of 4:17.59 in their matchup against Poland. However, it was Great Britain who would advance to the gold medal match up setting a new world record of 4:12.152 to reclaim the world record from the Americans. The Americans had broken Great Britain’s qualifying time in their match up against the Australians moving on the gold medal match up as well.

The track was home to other qualifying rounds earlier in the morning with Monique Sullivan and Kate O’Brien who teamed up for eighth in the team sprint the day before and were racing the keirin. O’Brien and Sullivan both failed to qualify for the next rounds in repechage.

Yesterday the pair were matched with Russia who would go on to win the silver medal in the next round against gold medalists China. Although they knocked 0.051 seconds off their previous time they were unable to advance to the medal rounds.

“We wanted a faster ride for our second run, and we got it,” said O’Brien. “But we were hoping for a bit faster. We’re both overwhelmed and underwhelmed at the same time, to be here. It’s amazing to be at the Olympic Games, but it’s also just another bike race; we see all the same people and do the same races. So we’ve been trying to keep the Olympic part in the back of our minds and focus on the racing. The nerves showed up a bit today, but not so much that I was obsessing.”

“I think we were both really hoping for more,” admitted Sullivan, “and I’m not exactly sure why the time wasn’t there. We’ve been showing really good form in training, and tried a bigger gear in the second ride, but I didn’t get on [Kate’s wheel], so I’m pretty bummed about that. I think Kate really did a good job today. I’m really excited for the Keirin tomorrow; it’s a completely different race and a different day, so I’m going to go out there fighting and hopefully it works out.”

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