It was a thrilling final, one where the winner was decided by under two-tenths of a second. The Italian riders executed their plan perfectly, winning in a new world record time of 3:42.032, while Denmark set a time of 3:42.198 to take the silver medal.
The Italians began with a hot start, surging out to a half second lead over the reigning world champions in the early stages.
"The main point was the start because, as you saw, the last key, we had the power to take the speed up,” said Simone Consonni, Italian team member. “So the training was concentrated just for the start with a lot of gym and a lot of effort from start, so that was the goal."
The consistent Danes ground down the advantage over the following laps and then began building their own lead, with an imposing .8 second gap with 800 metres to go as Ganna came to the front for his second long stint at the head of the race for the Italians.
Ganna rode the last three laps on the front for Italy, turning a 0.8 second deficit into a 0.166 winning advantage.
“We wanted to do something special. We knew the silver medal was a kind of parachute but we wanted more,” Ganna said.
“We knew we could pull time back in the final kilometre but when you’re in the race you can’t clock watch the hundredths of a second, you just push as hard as you can.
“The other guys put me in an ideal position for me to do my bit, they launched me at the speed I wanted and I finished it all off. But I can assure you that the work of Francesco Lamon, Jonathan Milan and Simone Consonni is harder than mine.”
It was the first Italian gold medal in the men’s team pursuit since the 1960 Rome Olympics
“We are so happy for this gold medal. We are so happy for the world record," said Francesco Lamon. "This is a big, big gift for all the group because it’s been five years that we started working for this, so we are so happy. We have a beautiful, beautiful team like a family, so, for me and for us, it's an honour to be part of this group.”
Meanwhile, the Danish team brought an end to their tumultuous campaign with a silver medal. The squad had been the target of the British team calling for their disqualification for the use of kinesiology tape in the qualification rounds, the tape acting as a more aerodynamic surface than skin.
Frederik Rodenberg Madsen then crashed when the team rode against Great Britain in the first round, riding into the back of Harry Tanfield as he hid his head and obscured his vision in an effort to remain as aerodynamic as possible. The Danish rider has since apologised for the incident to Tanfield, who he appeared to shout at after the crash.
Lasse Norman Hansen summed up the mood in the Danish camp.
“We’re incredibly disappointed right now, we’ve been training towards and hoping for gold for such a long time, so right now we are super disappointed,” said Hansen. "Today we lost to a team that went a few hundredths faster than us, and that is how we are thinking about it. That is devastating, but we can still be proud of silver."
