The German women’s foursome won the bronze medal at the European Track Cycling Championships in Apeldoorn, Netherlands.
The quartet with the three Olympic champions Franziska Brauße, Lisa Klein and Mieke Kröger as well as Laura Süßemilch gave Ireland no chance in the small final and prevailed with a lead of almost seven seconds.
The BDR quartet had already won bronze at the 2023 European Championships with an identical line-up. The last European Championship title was in Munich in 2022, when the gold line-up from Tokyo with Brauße, Klein, Kröger and Lisa Brennauer, who subsequently resigned, started.
In Apeldoorn, the German team clocked 4:14.768 minutes, around ten seconds slower than their world record in Tokyo (4:04.242). In the final, the British women, who had beaten the BDR foursome in the semi-finals, were slower than the German foursome in the bronze run in 4:15.950 minutes. Gold went to Italy (4:12.551).
In the men’s team pursuit, the German quartet of Tobias Buck-Gramcko, Felix Groß, Nicolas Heinrich and Tim Torn Teutenberg clearly lost the race for bronze against Italy and finished fourth. The last European Championship medal for the men’s foursome was in Baie-Mahault on Guadeloupe in 2014.