Denmark qualified fastest for the gold medal race and got out of the blocks quickly in the final but the Aussie quartet of Glenn O’Shea, Alex Edmondson, Luke Davison and Mitchell Mulhern fought back in the second half of the race to win with a time of 3 minutes 57.907 seconds, the Danes finishing on 59.623 seconds.
“It is hard to win back to back titles, but we trained really hard this year,” O’Shea, who with Edmondson was in last year’s world title winning line-up, said. “We had two new guys – well three new guys. We rode five guys. And they were super, super hungry to win a world title and I think that was the difference.”
Luke Davison was a late replacement for South Australian Miles Scotson who had raced in the qualifying round and the move provided the Australians with some fresh legs a proved pivotal in winning the rainbow jerseys.
In the race for bronze, New Zealand quartet Aaron Gate, Pieter Bulling, Dylan Kennett and Marc Ryan clocked 3 minutes 58.989 seconds to beat Russia who finished in 4 minutes 00.77 seconds.
Olympic champions Great Britain finished a disappointing eight.
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