Saturday, August 10, 2024 at 10:51 PM
For Harrie Lavreysen and Jeffrey Hoogland it was a short day at the cycling track of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines during the Olympic Games in Paris. The Dutch sprint stars only rode the preliminary round of the Keirin, in which they qualified for the quarter finals.
Lavreysen won his heat convincingly, although he escaped a fall in the penultimate lap. He had to go wide, but then rode to victory via an impressive rush. “It was a bit of a dangerous moment”, he said in front of the camera of the NOS.
“I wanted to gain some speed with two laps to go, but everything happened right in front of me,” he continued. “I steered really wide for a moment and lost all my speed, but from there on I basically just rode flat out. It was really fast in the end. It hurt a bit, but for one ride today it was fine.”
The 27-year-old Dutchman’s legs still felt surprisingly good, after he had won his second gold medal in the individual sprint tournament on Friday. “I am glad that it was only one ride today and that I was able to lie down in my hotel room for a while. After today, I am looking forward to tomorrow.”
Play ride
“A play ride.” That’s what Jeffrey Hoogland called his preliminary round in the Keirin tournament. He finished second in his heat and, like Lavreysen, qualified for the quarter finals. “I was allowed to pound away a bit, so there was some aggression… In general, I wanted Glaetzer’s wheel. It’s funny: he’s brought me forward for a few tournaments now. I had just given him a fist bump and thanked him. But he’s just doing it again, so in the end it was all relaxed!”
His legs felt a bit heavy, he said. “So it was also quite important to go all out in one ride and I could do that relatively economically this way. Of course you have to cycle hard and keep up, but everything could be done nicely in style. What could be possible? If you reach the final, anything is possible. Then it is really ‘on’. But okay, first you have to get through the quarter finals and the semi-finals. It is all possible, but you can also be out of it.”
