The Australian Cycling team has historically performed very strongly across both Track and Road races at the Olympic Games. However after a disappointing haul in Rio in 2016, where the Aussies brought home just one silver and one bronze, the Australian Cycling programme was re-jigged with Brit Simon Jones brought in as AusCycling Performance Director in the hope that some of the Brits' success would rub off heading into Tokyo 2020.
It’s been a difficult period for AusCycling, and not least because of Covid and the lack of recent competition racing in Australia, while European racing continued. So there’s a lot of unknowns for the Australian squad of 29 cyclists that have arrived in Tokyo. There are no current world champions among them, but expectations are of improvement with predictions of up to six medals for the Aussies.
While Road Racing, BMX and Mountain Bike Riding have been in full swing in the first week of the Games, our focus is the Track Cycling program which kicks off on Monday August 2nd.
The schedule is an exciting one with team and individual medals up for grabs.
There’s 12 medal events on the Tokyo schedule with the Team Sprint, Team Pursuit, Madison, Omnium, Kierin and Sprint events for both men and women.
The delay of the Tokyo Games did dent the chances of Australia in the Women’s Team Sprint after the retirements of Amy Cure and Steph Morton who decided against training on for 12 more months. The girls were eyeing off gold but will now be unlikely to even medal. However our Men’s and Women’s Pursuit teams are solid chances for a podium finish.
The usual teams are going to be contenders again in Tokyo with Germany, Netherlands and of course Great Britain sending out strong teams.
Men's Sprint - Harrie Lavreysen
The best bet of the schedule may be Dutch superstar Harrie Lavreysen in the Sprint. Lavreysen has won the world title in the Sprint in the last two years, while the Dutch team have taken the world title in the Team Sprint the past three years. They are simply the fastest in the world right now and, barring disaster, they will be collecting gold. Multi the two results together for some more value. Lavreysen is also the favourite in the Kierin event but that traditionally throws up a few more surprises so we’ll stick with the Sprint events.
Harrie Lavreysen to win Sprint
$1.83
Netherlands to win Team Sprint
$1.45
Women's Kierin - Emma Hinze
Germany’s Emma Hinze looks value in the Women’s Keirin. At the 2020 World Championships, Hinze collected three gold medals to stamp her authority over Hong Kong’s Wai Sze Lee as the fastest female cyclist in the world. At 23-years of age, Hinze is at the peak of her powers in Tokyo and will be hard to beat.
Emma Hize to win Women’s Keirin
$3.50
At the moment, there’s limited other individual track cycling betting markets, so we’ll update this article if more betting options are made available.
