The crowds at the 2026 Commonwealth Games have varied in size and spirit.

Particularly at the Scottish Event Campus, not far from the city centre, casual fans will wander down and get a taste of the action if they've got time on their weekend.

It's school holiday time in Glasgow too, so plenty of families looking for a way to occupy the kids have made their way into the various arenas.

You may never get the chance to watch again, so a spot of 3x3 basketball or bowls, accompanied by some frankly excellent tunes and an overpriced carton of chips, is a decent way to spend four hours.

That's especially true when the weather has been so dreary to start the Games.

But on a day when it dried out at last, thousands made a decidedly purposeful pilgrimage to the velodrome at the Glasgow International Arena, just next to the home ground of Celtic Football Club.

This was not something you happen upon. This was something you go to. This was the moment Scotland had been waiting for at the arena named for one of their favourite sons, Sir Chris Hoy.

Ironically, before every race it was a pre-recorded Sir Chris (the real thing might have caused a riot) and fellow Scottish icon Duncan Scott telling the crowd to quiet down — or "haud yer wheesht", as Scott said — for the starter's buzzer.

But even Hoy — the six-time Olympic, 11-time world and two-time Commonwealth cycling champion — couldn't have contained his house when it was Scotland's Neil Fache (along with pilot Aaron Pope) who won the first gold of the track cycling program for these Games in the men's tandem B 1,000m time trial.

Australian Kane Perris won Australia's first medal in that event alongside pilot Luke Zaccaria, and earlier in the day, Tara Neyland had picked up Australia's first world record in any event at these Games when she clocked 4:49.648 in qualifying for the C4-5 4,000m individual pursuit.

She later went on to win gold, but only after the women's team pursuit squad started what the cycling team hopes will be a gold rush in Glasgow.

Trailing New Zealand at the halfway mark of the gold medal race against New Zealand, the team of Georgia Baker, Claudia Marcks, Alyssa Polites and Felicity Wilson-Haffenden put away their schedule and just started racing.

"That's my happy place. When we start racing, that's when I'm happiest. When the board goes away, and the hand signals come out, that's when I come into my own," 21-year-old gun Wilson-Haffenden said.

"Just pedal. I was riding 50-cent coins by the end, the pedals weren't going around smooth but giving as much power as I had, grit the teeth and get to the finish line."

England pipped their men's counterparts, and Jessica Gallagher was unable to defend her Birmingham gold in the tandem B sprint final after a tyre failure caused a nasty crash with the New Zealanders in the second race.

But, as pilot Jacqui Mengler-Mohr put it: "It's not how many times you fall, it's how many times you get back up."

And getting back up was exactly what the men's team sprinters did, going one better than the women's team and taking down their English rivals in the final.

They never looked like getting caught over the 1,000m race as Leigh Hoffman won a title as the leader of a new-look team with 23-year-old Danny Barber and 22-year-old Ryan Elliott.

The revamp came after the defection of Olympic gold medallist and sprint superstar Matthew Richardson, whose name Elliott wouldn't even utter when talking about the rivalry with Team England.

"I think it's definitely grown a lot since the swap and defection," he said.

"Between the GB guys maybe a bit less so but definitely between the defector himself."

He wasn't the only departure after the team's gold medal at the Paris Olympics, with Matthew Glaetzer retiring and Tom Cornish pivoting to endurance events, making way for Elliott and Barber.

"There's a big change in the roster after Paris, and everyone's question then is: how well can our system back up? What's their depth?" he said.

"Us as the younger guys coming through wanted to prove we have depth in Australia and we're here because we're hungry."

Hoffman said he enjoyed riding with teammates who were 100 per cent in it for Australia.

"It would've been great if he stayed with Australia but his heart was obviously never always in it, so good riddance," he said.

Richardson is no longer coming to Glasgow at all due to an ugly fall during a keirin race in Japan just days ago, with Hoffman disappointed he and Barber won't get a crack at him in the individual event.

"I would have loved for him to come here and race and see how I and Danny stack up against him," Hoffman said.

"I'm upset he's not here, but that is what it is. … I've got plenty of other fish to worry about."

England, Wales, Scotland, Australia and New Zealand are some of the world's strongest track cycling nations, with Malaysia's Azizul Awang and Nicholas Paul from Trinidad and Tobago threats for Hoffman and Barber.

But the good news is Hoffman isn't going anywhere.

"We checked his passport and his lineage," Elliott said.

"So he's good."