”These Olympics, just looking at the spread of medals in Tokyo, the Brits were still dominant and the Dutch joined them,” said Jesse Korf, AusCycling’s executive general manager of performance. “And now it seems like we’ve been able to rejoin that group of superpowers in cycling, which is incredibly encouraging and exciting.

“We’ve just got to make sure that, as much as we’ve got to celebrate all the amazing things that happened here, we keep stoic, stay critical and keep building.”

Key to that building is Richardson, the 25-year-old sprint ace who tested Dutch master Harrie Lavreysen more than anybody else from anywhere else in the world to date, ultimately finishing behind him with silver in the individual sprint, silver in the kierin and bronze in the team sprint.

Lavreysen clinched gold in all three, becoming the first cyclist since British legend Sir Chris Hoy to sweep the men’s sprint events at an Olympics.

Korf said Richardson was “at the age where theoretically his physical peak should be in LA”. Richardson himself was optimistic, too, given his progress since Tokyo, when he exited in the early rounds of the sprint. It is, at the very least, the early stages of a rivalry with the 27-year-old Lavreysen already separated by mere milliseconds.

“This is the closest anyone’s ever got to him in the last four or five years, when he really started to take off,” Richardson said a few minutes after executing a celebratory backflip for broadcast media. “Normally you do a sprint and go, ‘I’ve qualified well but Harry’s going to beat me by about two or three 10ths of a second’.

“It was three-thousandths of a second [in the sprint event], so I think that’s a bit of a statement of what’s to come. If I can keep progressing the way I’m progressing, that might shift and it might be me on top of qualifying.

“Harry’s not that old so it’s going to be tough … I can see Harry and I pushing each other to the line until we both were retired, to be honest.”

On Sunday, Richardson pushed Lavreysen all the way around the final bend in a keirin final he said was the fastest in history, crossing 0.056 seconds adrift. Behind them, a three-rider pile-up opened up crucial space for Glaetzer to slip through and take out bronze. It was the 31-year-old’s first individual Olympic medal in four Games, and came a few days after his men’s team sprint bronze ended a miserable run of fourth places.

“Good to finish on some good luck,” said Glaetzer, who reconfirmed this will be his last Olympics. “I mean, look, it’s not all luck … I was just grateful that I stayed upright in that final corner.

“They were bumping me and then I saw them absolutely all hit the deck and was just trying to survive at that point and not crash into them. And all of a sudden I saw that I was crossing a line with bronze and couldn’t believe it. I felt like a bit of a Steve Bradbury, but oh gosh it’s amazing. To finish with an Olympic individual medal is something really special.”

The challenge now will be supporting the women’s side of the program to catch back up. The gap has been particularly evident in the women’s sprint – once a discipline of immense depth led by two-time Olympic gold medallist Anna Meares but now sparse enough that Australia did not qualify a women’s sprint team for the expanded three-rider event.

Georgia Baker came the closest to a medal, sitting second in the omnium heading into the last of the four races but dropping to fifth after an underwhelming points race.

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“Pretty upset,” Baker said. “I’m proud of how I rode and the three events prior. I was really happy with being really consistent, and I can’t be disappointed because I didn’t leave anything out on the track. I gave it my all, but I still am disappointed.”

Baker, 29, carried added emotion into her third Games following the death of former teammate and friend Melissa Hoskins last December, from injuries sustained by a car outside her home in Adelaide. Her husband, fellow cyclist Rohan Dennis, has been charged with causing her death.

On the eve of the Paris Games, Baker gifted her team pursuit quartet matching watches to honour Hoskins’ memory.

“Mel was a teammate of mine in Rio and gave me a watch before Rio,” Baker said. “The Olympics in itself this week, it goes so quickly. But the main things I think when I look back on the Olympics is the process and the journey, and I think that was what I wanted the watches to be. No matter how we perform on the track, it’s a moment that you’ll remember regardless of the result.”