Olympedia – Individual Pursuit, 4,000 metres, Men

The best pursuiters in the world were the East Germans and Soviets. In their absence, the favorite’s role fell to Rolf Gölz (FRG), who had placed second at the 1982 World Championships. Despite the boycott, the field had 33 riders, the largest ever Olympic starting field for this event. The qualifying was led by American Steve Hegg, a former national team ski racer, who won by almost 11 seconds over France’s Pascal Robert, with Golz placing fifth. There were four rounds of match races, and Hegg and Gölz easily made it to the final, with Gölz overtaking his opponents in both the quarters and semis. In the final, Gölz started quickly but Hegg caught him by 2,500 metres and pulled away to an easy victory. In the bronze medal race, another American, Leonard Harvey Nitz, defeated Australian Dean Woods to take third place. After his defeat, Gölz told Hegg, )You wouldn’t have beaten me in Germany,) to which Hegg replied, )I really don’t care - this is Los Angeles.)

Hegg and Nitz’s medals were unusual for the United States in track cycling, although the Eastern Bloc boycott had much to do with this. But shortly after the competition, it was revealed that several members of the American track cycling team, including Hegg and Nitz, had participated in blood doping – usually done by harvesting their own blood several weeks before the competition and then re-injecting it shortly before the event. But because the US team had not planned this correctly, they did not have time to harvest their own blood, so they had blood injected from other donors, a very dangerous practice because of the risk of antibody reactions and viral contamination. This was not illegal at the time, but in 1985, blood doping would be banned by the IOC.