CYCLING

Sprint stars go mate against mate

By Sports Media NZ

It will be mate against mate at this week’s New Zealand Track Cycling championships in Invercargill.
The World Champion and silver medal Olympic men’s team sprint will be lining up against eachother over the sprint competition which is likely to provide plenty of fireworks at the SIT Velodrome with competition from this Thursday until Sunday.

The trio of Ethan Mitchell, Sam Webster and local Southland star Eddie Dawkins are building towards April’s UCI World Championships in Hong Kong, where they hope to defend the rainbow jerseys they won last year in London.

While this trio of close mates transform from friends to foes, Cycling New Zealand’s national sprint coach Anthony Peden believes a number of rising stars will also pressure his champion trio.

“It always a difficult scenario when you are with your training partners and teammates day-in and day-out and then you have to compete against eachother,” said Peden. “But equally everyone wants to be a national champion.

“At the moment we have some emerging talent who have really stepped up over the last six to eight months. Zac Williams and Jordan Castle have put down some world class performances in training of late. They will push the others to the limit.”

Peden is also looking for some new names to put their hands up this week.

“It is every young rider’s aspiration to ride against the best in the world. There are not too many opportunities for them to impress us – just the Oceanias and these championships, so I am looking forward to the young talent.”
 

However Peden warned that Mitchell, Webster and Dawkins have well and truly jettisoned any post-Olympic lethargy.

“They have never trained as consistently this good. Their performances in training day-in and day-out have lifted again which makes it even harder for young riders because the benchmark keeps moving.
“I am not expecting world record times this week from them. The focus is Hong Kong where we want to continue our dominance in the team sprint.”

Peden is pleased with the growing depth in women’s sprint with Natasha Hansen just returning from a prolong break after the Olympics while her young Rio teammate Olivia Podmore is impressing in training.

“I am quite excited with the females in training. Olivia had two personal bests in training last week, which is the result of her dedication following her crash in Rio. Tarsh is coming back into things while Emma Cumming is a current junior world champion, so we are getting more depth of quality. The women’s programme is a few years behind where the men currently are but it is exciting for Tokyo and beyond.”

Morning sessions at the Vantage Windows and Doors National Track Championships begin at 10am with evening finals from 6.30pm.


Details: www.cyclingnewzealand.nz