The Dutch team sprinters have won the world title on the World Championship track in Ballerup, Denmark, for the sixth time in seven years. In the current formation it is the fifth in six years.

Roy van den Berg, Harrie Lavreysen and Jeffrey Hoogland pulverized the Australians in the final and completely lived up to the high expectations. This world title is extra special for Hoogland, who rode his hundredth team sprint of his career today.

“After Paris we had so much euphoria and we were invited to so many beautiful places. It was difficult to get going again,” Hoogland said. “But in the end we really wanted to keep the jersey.”

And so the three are working as hard as they can in the last few months, says Van den Berg. “It is almost normal that we win this part, but we are also just people. We have been looking forward to the Games for four years and then it almost feels like you have to do the World Cup team sprint afterwards. Even though it is just a World Cup.”

“It didn’t come naturally,” he continues. “We had to charge ourselves a lot to achieve this. But we are extremely strong in our heads, and we have shown that again here.”

Earlier in the day, the sprinters reinforced their favorite status by recording the fastest time in qualifying. The second fastest time was also Australia’s, more than four-tenths of a second slower than the ‘Bullet Train’.

Australia, 2022 world champions, missed their independent man. In Denmark they rode without their most important man of recent years: Matthew Richardson. After the Olympic Games, he announced that he would participate in international tournaments under the British flag. Due to the switch, he will miss these world championships.

Yet the Australians started the final very strongly. After the first lap they were even a tenth of a second ahead of the Netherlands.

However, Lavreysen managed to reverse the deficit and ended the second round with a small lead over the fast Australians. Hoogland built on its strength in the third round, resulting in the Dutch team ultimately winning the world title by more than six-tenths of a second.