So you all sat up late last night & are therefore too tired to comment on Katies brilliant ride? C'mon, have that strong morning coffee and wake up! :p
Katie Mactier wins pursuit silver
August 23, 2004 - 2:49AM
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Australia's Katie Mactier bowed to a stunning world record performance by New Zealand's Sarah Ulmer and took the silver medal in the 3000m individual pursuit in Olympic track cycling.
Ulmer set her second world record in as many days when she powered home in three minutes 24.537 seconds, six second faster than the mark she held coming into the Olympics.
Mactier's time was a PB of 3:27.650, improving on the world record she set in the qualifying rounds before Ulmer smashed it by three seconds a matter of minutes later.
The 29-year-old from Melbourne went out hard from the start as she always does but Ulmer reeled her in during the second kilometre and ran away to win the fastest 3000m race seen.
It was Australia's second individual pursuit silver of the Games, following Brad McGee's second place.
But Mactier's teammate Kate Bates was beaten by defending champion and four-time Olympic gold medallist Leontien Zijlaard-van Moorsel in the bronze medal race.
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Zijlaard-van Moorsel set another remarkable time of 3:27.037 which would have been a world record 24 hours earlier.
Mactier has made a remarkable rise in her short career as a track cyclist.
She was a schoolgirl athlete but gave up competitive sport when she studied at Melbourne's RMIT, taking up triathlons in her mid-20s for fun.
Victorian Institute of Sport officials convinced her to ditch the running and swimming and, at the age of 24, she started road racing.
She only came onto the track last year and within months of taking up the individual pursuit she had pushed Zijlaard-van Moorsel all the way to take world championship silver and quickly mark herself as an Olympic medal prospect.
"It's a tremendous honour, I'm very humbled to be running silver behind Sarah, she and Leontien are two very class acts," Mactier said.
Ryan Bayley and Anna Meares progressed into the sprint quarter-finals, while Sean Eadie bowed out in the repechages.
And Graeme Brown, Brett Lancaster, Brad McGee and Luke Roberts broke Australia's own world record in the 4000m team pursuit with a time of three minutes 56.342 in the first round to set up a gold medal race against Great Britain.
They took 0.938 of a second off the mark Brown, Lancaster, Roberts and Peter Dawson set at the world championships in Stuttgart last year.