ESPN Olympic Sports

ATHENS, Greece -- No American cyclists managed to escape the qualification rounds Saturday, all of them getting bounced after just one event along the speedy Olympic velodrome.

Erin Mirabella finished 10th in qualifying for the 3,000-meter individual pursuit, and the team sprint squad of Adam Duvendeck, Giddeon Massie and Christian Stahl posted only the 11th-best time in its preliminary race. The top eight finishers in the 12-entrant fields rode in medal qualifying rounds later Saturday.

Also Saturday, Britain won its second track cycling gold medal of these Olympics, when Bradley Wiggins defeated Australia's Brad McGee in the 4,000-meter pursuit final. Spain's Sergi Escobar took the bronze.

Wiggins was among seven riders to set either an Olympic or world record in Friday's opening session at the banked wooden oval, and more marks fell Saturday. Three women in pursuit qualifying topped the former world record of 3:30.604, set earlier this year by New Zealand's Sarah Ulmer.

Australia's Katie Mactier and Dutch star Leontien Ziljaard-van Moorsel both topped Ulmer's old mark in their qualifying heat, with Mactier finishing in 3:29.945, van Moorsel in 3:30.422.

Mactier's record lasted about five minutes. Ulmer took it right back in the next heat, finishing 12 laps around the 250-meter track in 3:26.400.

"They're flying," Mirabella said. "It's definitely real competitive out there."

Mirabella's time in pursuit qualifying was 3 minutes, 36.992 seconds -- 1.815 seconds slower than the time turned in by Russia's Olga Slyusareva, the eighth and final rider to advance. Still, it was Mirabella's personal-best time for a pursuit race at sea level, and the second fastest overall of her career.

"That was the best I could do today," said Mirabella, who will also ride in the points race on Wednesday -- the final day of track cycling at the Athens Games.

The U.S. sprint team finished three laps in 45.742 seconds, shattering its previous best mark at the distance by seven-tenths of a second. Greece, which had a time of 44.986 seconds, was the final team qualifier for the next round.

The Americans were on the track against the Greeks, and Massie said he and his teammates tried to use the raucous, pro-Greek, sold-out velodrome crowd to their advantage.

"That's a feeling you don't get in training," Massie said afterward. "That's something you only get on race day, at the Olympics, against the home country."

Germany edged Japan in the team sprint final later Saturday, with France -- the gold medalist in Sydney -- winning the bronze. It was the third Olympic gold for Germany's Jens Fiedler, the individual sprint winner at both the 1992 and 1996 Games.

Although the American trio -- the second-youngest group of riders in the team sprint field, with an average age of 21.7 -- weren't there, they left pleased with their time.

"We were pumped," Stahl said. "It's not everyday you get to race in an atmosphere like this."

Wiggins didn't match his Olympic record of 4:15.165 in the pursuit final, but didn't have to, either. He pulled away steadily in the second half of the 16-lap final against McGee, who was 4.132 seconds behind Wiggins' time of 4:16.304.

Individual pursuit races begin with riders on opposite sides of the track; wins come by either catching the opponent or finishing the race distance first. In the team sprint, all three riders for each nation are on the track together, with each leading one of the three laps.

Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press