Jack Carlin, Ed Lowe and Hamish Turnbull continued Great Britain’s medal-winning start at the Olympic velodrome with team sprint silver in Paris.
In a repeat of the Tokyo final three years ago, they were beaten by a supreme Netherlands trio, who set a world record of 40.949 seconds to retain their title.
With Carlin – now a three-time Olympic medallist – on the final lap, Britain crossed the finish line 0.865 seconds behind.
It follows the historic women’s team sprint gold won by Emma Finucane, Sophie Capewell and Katy Marchant on Monday – the first day of action at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines velodrome.
“I’m ecstatic. A silver medal is something I didn’t think was possible going into this,” Lowe, 20, told BBC Sport.
“I’ll definitely take that.”
Turnbull, who like Lowe is making his Olympic debut, added: “I’m buzzing. We weren’t expecting to fight for gold, we were chasing the bronze.
“To get into that gold final, all stress was off and we could really enjoy it and show everyone what we could do without any pressure on our backs.”
Carlin, Turnbull and Lowe had come through qualifying on Monday with the second-fastest time.
In Tuesday’s first round, they beat Germany by more than half a second to guarantee themselves a medal.
But in an era of Dutch dominance, it was always going to be the men in orange – who have won five of the past six men’s team sprint World Championship titles – they faced in the final.
Roy van den Berg, Harrie Lavreysen and Jeffrey Hoogland broke their own Olympic record in qualifying, before back-to-back world records on their way to the top of the podium.