New Zealand Women Continue Cycling Track Success in Beijing

The New Zealand women’s pursuit team strengthened their place at the top of the UCI World Cup rankings after victory in the final in Beijing overnight (NZ time).

The BikeNZ trio of Rushlee Buchanan (Te Awamutu), Kaytee Boyd (Waiuku) and Jaime Nielsen (Hamilton) won the final in impressive fashion on the opening night of the third World Cup.

The team, without Commonwealth Games medallists Alison Shanks and Lauren Ellis, were always in control in the final against Canada, winning by more than two seconds in a strong display. They made a fast start, opening up a winning lead of 1.2 seconds in the opening kilometre, stretching that to 1.7sec at 2km and 2.2sec at the finish.

New Zealand leads Australia by seven points with Canada third in the overall World Cup standings with one round remaining in Manchester next month.

Auckland’s Kaytee Boyd said it was mission accomplished but just part of the push towards the world championships in March.

“I would give us 6.5 out of 10. It was hard to really celebrate because it was a stepping stone towards the world championships and we still feel like we have so far we can go,” Boyd said.

“It was not our best performance time-wise but the track here in Beijing was pretty cold. We will take the win but we still need to keep pushing forward.

“One of the goals was to go out and hit the qualifier in first place and get that advantage. It was nice as the World Cup leaders to go last and know exactly what we had to do. By starting last was quite a benefit in that we could ride to a time and hold that little bit back for the final which was great.

“It was definitely the plan to go faster in the final. We wanted to lay it all down and it’s great to go into Manchester with the lead in place.

“The main goal was to put it all out there in the final and we were all pretty toasted at the end. That’s still quite difficult because we are not peaking yet and still working through to the world championships in March.”

The squad has another training camp and the national championships in Invercargill next month before the final World Cup in Manchester, with a final camp ahead of the world championships in Poland.

The BikeNZ trio were the top qualifiers after the morning ride, clocking 3:36.477 from Canada with Australia third, later beating Netherlands for the bronze medal ride.

Invercargill’s Tom Scully made a strong return to top level competition to win the elimination race on the way to finishing sixth overall after the first day in the six-race men’s omnium.

The 21 year old was out of the sport for seven months in rehabilitation following surgery after his high speed crash into a power pole in a road race in Ireland last May.

He was ninth fastest in the opening 250m flying lap in 13.765 sec and 13th in the 30km points race. He bounced back to win the elimination race to jump him up to sixth overall on 23 points, with the competition led by Canada’s Zach Bell.

The omnium concludes tomorrow with the scratch race, individual pursuit and 1km time trial.

Earlier Jo Kiesanowski and Natasha Hansen were 13th in the women’s team sprint.

Tomorrow Kiesanowski begins her quest in the omnium, with Hansen and Simon Van Velthooven in sprint and keirin competition, Scully completes his omnium, while the women’s individual pursuit is also on the race schedule.

Day 1 results, UCI World Cup Beijing:
Women’s 3000m team pursuit final: New Zealand (Rushlee Buchanan, Kaytee Boyd, Jaime Nielsen) 3:25.062, Canada 3:27.238, 2; Australia 3:26.515, 3; Netherlands 3:28.281, 4.
Qualifying: New Zealand 3:26.477, 1; Canada 3:27.606, 2; Australia 3:28.107, 3; Netherlands 3:29.094, 4.

Men’s Omnium, day 1:
Flying lap: Zach Bell (CAN) 13.233, 1; Chris Mansilla (CHI) 13.501, 2; Alois Kankovsky (CZE) 13.508, 3. Also: Tom Scully (NZL) 13.765, 9.
30km points race: Behnam Khalili (IRI) 31 points, 1; Nicky Cocquyt (BEL) 30, 2; Ho Ting Kwok (HKG) 25, 3. Also: Scully 3, 13.

Elimination race: Scully 1, Roger Kluge (GER) 2, Sam Harrison (GBR) 3.
Standings after 3 of 6 events: Bell 11 points, 1; Kluge and Harrison, 14, equal 2. Also: Scully 23, 6.
Women’s team sprint: Joanne Kiesanowski and Natasha Hansen 38.283, 13.

Full details: www.bikenz.org.nz