Rio Olympics 2016: Women's pursuit team to ride for bronze

New Zealand's women's pursuit team booked a place in the bronze medal race later this morning. Photo / AP

The New Zealand women's pursuit cycling team have booked a ride for a bronze medal later this morning after recording an easy victory over Poland in their first round race.

In what was largely a heart-breaking morning for New Zealand's track cycling team - with two riders knocked out of their events by the smallest of margins - the pursuit team rescued the morning session.

The team of Lauren Ellis, Racquel Sheath, Rushlee Buchanan and Jaime Nielsen beat Poland by nearly ten seconds, finishing in a time of 4:17.592 to qualify for the bronze medal race which will take place at 8:07am NZ time.

Earlier, Sam Webster missed out on a place in men's sprint quarter-finals after comfortably going down to Russia's Denis Dmitriev in his 1/8 final race before finishing second by just 0.048s in his repechage.

It was also heartbreak in the women's keirin as both Natasha Hansen and Olivia Podmore missed out progressing past the first round.

Hansen was first pipped into third place by a photo finish in her heat before finishing an even more agonising second in her repechage in her second photo finish of the morning.

Podmore spectacularly crashed out of her heat - she was unlucky to be caught up in the melee as three riders ahead of her first fell from their bikes - before finishing fifth in her repechage race, obviously affected by her big fall.