Great Britain won silver in a pulsating men’s team pursuit final to secure a third medal in as many days in the Paris Olympic velodrome.

Ethan Hayter, Dan Bigham, Charlie Tanfield and Ethan Vernon were pipped to gold by Australia, who win this event for the first time since the 2004 Games.

Despite a strong start, the British quartet had trailed Australia by tiny fractions of a second for most of the race and were under two-tenths of a second behind as they started the final lap.

But with under 200m to go, Hayter, who was leading the GB train, came out of his saddle and almost lost control of his bike as Australia took the victory.

Team GB have have won medals in the men’s team pursuit at six of the past seven Olympics, the only blip in that record coming three years ago in Tokyo, when a controversial crash in their second round of racing against Denmark ended their 13-year reign as Olympic champions.