The Canadian men鈥檚 pursuit cycling team, with Jay Lamoureux of Victoria, showed it will contend for the podium at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics.
The Canuck team of Lamoureux, Michael Foley of Toronto, Derek Gee of Ottawa and Adam Jamieson of Barrie, Ont., finished fourth after losing to Denmark in the bronze-medal race at the 2019 UCI world championships in Pruszkow, Poland.
But just being in the world medal round was a breakthrough for the Canadians.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a huge step for the program,鈥� Gee said in a statement.
鈥淥bviously, it鈥檚 always disappointing to lose a ride. But looking at it, I don鈥檛 think we expected to make a medal round. So, to make the medal round was exceeding [expectations] and we can come away with big positives.鈥�
It follows a boffo season for the Canadian team, which broke the Canadian record in taking the silver medal at the World Cup race in January at Cambridge, N.Z.
It was the fourth time in the season the Canadian team had lowered the national record.
Lamoureux and his Canadian men鈥檚 teammates began their emergence by winning the bronze medal at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia, last April and have challenged in world races since then. Being centralized at the 2015 Pan Am Games Velodrome in Milton, Ont., is paying dividends.
As is the 25-year-old velodrome from the 1994 Victoria Commonwealth Games. The 23-year-old Lamoureux is a converted runner who turned to cycling on that velodrome in Colwood after competing in middle-distance track and cross-country at Oak Bay High School.
He is the latest international track cyclist to come out of what is now known as the Westshore Velodrome, located behind The Q Centre, and which was threatened and saved only after the Island cycling community rallied to assure its continued existence.
Others who have come out of the Colwood facility include 2012 London Olympic bronze-medallist Gillian Carleton of Victoria and 2015 Toronto Pan Am Games gold-medallist Evan Carey of Oak Bay.
