One of the most successful Dutch sports teams of the past five years took another title on Friday. The super trio in the team sprint – Roy van den Berg, Harrie Lavreysen and Jeffrey Hoogland – slowed down a bit after the Olympics, but was again much better than the competition at the European Track Cycling Championships.
The Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome in Glasgow at the end of April was the setting for a result that has been virtually unimaginable since 2018: the Dutch team sprinters finished ‘only’ third at a Nations Cup match in the Scottish city.
With Hoogland, a third of the success formation that has won everything there is to win in track cycling in recent years was missing. But for the other teams, it was the first sign in a long time that the Dutch might not be infallible. “I assume that the defeat gave the competition hope,” says Lavreysen.
If that hope was indeed there, it was skillfully crushed in Munich this week. The first joint match between Van den Berg, Lavreysen and Hoogland since the gold at the Olympic Games in Tokyo last summer yielded a result that is as predictable as it is impressive. The trio was already much better than the rest in the qualifiers and the first round of the European Championship, after which France was defeated in the final. The difference between gold and silver was almost a second – a gaping hole in a race of just 600 meters.
“We look a lot at the other teams,” says Lavreysen. “To their lap times, to what they do. And we see that there is really a lot of potential in the competition. That’s why it was very nice to see at this European Championship that we are still very far ahead.”
The Dutch top trio is now so well attuned to each other and has won so many times that it is already 1-0 ahead of the rest before the race. “When I’m at the start with Roy and Jeffrey, I just know that everything is right,” says Lavreysen. “To have that feeling back, for the first time since the Tokyo Games, was really enjoyable.”
Jeffrey Hoogland, Roy van den Berg and Harrie Lavreysen have dominated the team sprint for years.
Jeffrey Hoogland, Roy van den Berg and Harrie Lavreysen have dominated the team sprint for years. Photo: AP
Braspennincx calls teammates’ performance ‘magisterial’
Shanne Braspennincx sees every training session what the ideal image of a team sprint is. “The dynamics that Roy, Harrie and Jeffrey have with the three of them is really bizarre,” says the Olympic champion in the keirin part, who took silver in the women’s tournament together with Kyra Lamberink, Hetty van de Wouw on Friday.
“We’ve been spoiled so much that we’ve come to find their performance normal. But of course it’s magical what they put down every time. I think those three even pump out a good time if you wake them up in the middle of the night for a team sprint.”
Van den Berg, Lavreysen and Hoogland proved with their performance at the European Championships that despite all the successes they are far from being satisfied. In two months, the fifth world title in a row will beckon in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France, on the track where the Dutch want to extend their Olympic title in 2024.
“After the Tokyo Games, we took it easy for a while,” says Lavreysen. “But now all three of us are back and we want to do everything we can to continue to dominate. Our hunger to win is just as great as it was five years ago.”
The fixed order of the team sprint: starter Van den Berg ahead of second man Lavreysen and final driver Hoogland.
The fixed order of the team sprint: starter Van den Berg ahead of second man Lavreysen and final driver Hoogland. Photo: AP