PARIS: British riders head to the Olympic velodrome on Monday seeking to reinforce their status as the world's pre-eminent track cycling nation, but the face a tough assignment after some high-profile retirements.
They have topped the medals table at every Games since Beijing in 2008, but are without retired legends Laura and Jason Kenny – who won 12 gold between them – and Katie Archibald, who broke her leg in a freak accident.
Even with the Kenny juggernaut in Tokyo, there was a narrowing of the gap by the chasing pack, with the Netherlands in hot pursuit.
After winning 12 cycling medals in Rio, including six golds, Britain only managed nine in Japan and just three golds. They won seven golds at both the Beijing and London Olympics.
They will be heavily leaning on sprinter Emma Finucane this time – the new face of British cycling after bursting on the scene by winning the sprint world title last year in Glasgow.
She backed it up with victory at the European championships this year.
The 21-year-old will also contest the keirin and team sprint as she bids to become the first female cyclist to win three golds at the same Olympics.
"With the times I've put down, it's all positive going into the Paris Olympics," she said.
"I'm excited. I'm going into it with an open mind."
Laura Kenny, who won five gold at three successive Olympics before calling it quits after Tokyo, is expecting big things from Finucane.
"No pressure here, Emma, but I'm ready to roll the dice and say that she is the one member of Team GB I really back to light up Paris," Kenny said in a newspaper column this week.
"She has a rare talent. Emma can win multiple medals in Paris."
Alongside her in the women's sprint line-up are Katy Marchant, who won individual bronze at the 2016 Rio Games, and debutant Sophie Capewell.
Other Olympic medallists in the British squad include madison star Ethan Hayter and Jack Carlin, who leads the men's sprinters at the 5,000-capacity Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome.
The Dutch team are again spearheaded by powerhouse sprinter Harrie Lavreysen, the defending men's individual champion.
He is also among the favourites in the keirin, looking to better the bronze he clinched in Japan, and is a key component of their team sprint squad that has been a dominant force since 2018 when they claimed their first world title.
The same Dutch sprint trio of Roy van den Berg, Lavreysen and Jeffrey Hoogland that upset three-times defending champions Britain in Tokyo are back again.
Other riders to watch include Jennifer Valente, who stunned then omnium world champion Yumi Kajihara in Tokyo to become the first American woman to win an Olympic track cycling gold.
Valente has since asserted herself as the woman to beat, winning back-to-back world titles in 2022 and 2023.
New Zealand's Ellesse Andrews won keirin silver on her Olympic debut in 2021 and has only got better since, storming to the world title in Glasgow last year.
She is also tipped as a medal contender in the individual sprint.
"I'm really excited," she said.
"Now I have a bit more experience behind me and it's a cooler place to be coming from. I'm a different person now than I was at the last Olympics, and that's just from having more experience and growing up a little bit."
The cycling action gets underway on Monday with the women's team sprint finals before wrapping up on August 11 with a bumper day where the women's sprint and omnium gold and men's keirin are decided. --AFP