Australia has struck silver in the men's team pursuit on day two of the 2025 UCI Track World Championships in Santiago, Chile, ending a six-year podium drought in one of the sport's premier events.
ARA Australian Cycling Team's Blake Agnoletto, Oliver Bleddyn, Conor Leahy, James Moriarty and Liam Walsh stepped onto the podium below Denmark, who prevailed in the gold medal final in a clinical display of textbook team pursuiting.
The final winning margin for the Danes' was 3.343 seconds in a time of 3:43.915. That gap had remained slimmer until the final four laps of the 4000-metre race but increased by two seconds in the closing two laps.
Agnoletto, Bleddyn, Leahy and Moriarty finished in a time of 3:47.258.
Olympic champion Leahy said coming up against the Danes, who completed a treble of consecutive world championship wins, was always going to be a massive task.
"They have been the benchmark team at world championships for the last four to five years," he said.
"We changed our strategy slightly to give ourselves a good chance of tackling them head on in the last kilometre.
"It didn’t quite work out the way we wanted which is always disappointing, but I think it’s something we can take a lot of learning from moving forward. We can also find confidence in certain aspects of the ride and the whole competition."
Australia's full Olympic gold medal-winning team is yet to race together since the heroics of Paris 2024, with Leahy and Bleddyn, clearly identifiable by their new gold Factor Hanzo track frames, not joined by Kelland O'Brien and Sam Welsford in Santiago.
Depth and experience replacing the WorldTour pair is far from an issue, as shown by the team's three rides over the past two days.
"This group has done a great job of continuing the momentum created during Paris and to be fighting for the gold again at a major championship is nothing to blink an eye at," Leahy said.
"I’m proud that I can continue to be at the top level of the sport but obviously this (silver medal) leaves a lot of motivation to come back and bring myself and the team to the level of winning gold.
"This group has really gelled over the last couple months starting from the Türkiye Nations Cup and building through our short camp into this race.
"The thing that I’m most impressed with is how the guys have dealt with the pressure of this race, by putting the expectation on ourselves and delivering some great rides with a lot of high-level decision making, which is a great marker for world class team pursuits.
"I think with even more time together, we can experiment and develop people into more specific roles and find that extra few percentage points to fight into that top step position."
After qualifying in fourth position, the women's team pursuit squad was unsuccessful in progressing to the medal rounds and finished seventh.
Maeve Plouffe, Claudia Marcks, Alyssa Polites and Sophie Edwards posted a time of 4:18.823 in their first round contest opposite eventual world champions Italy.
Alexandra Manly, who rode qualifying, was replaced by Marcks for the first round.
Result - Men Team Pursuit
Gold medal final
🥇 Denmark - 3:43.915
🥈 Australia - 3:47.258
Feature picture: Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com