The WCNI Selectors Trevor Gudsell, Jeremy Cottam and Luke McCarthy will be looking to select athletes and combinations of athletes for the New Zealand Track Cycling Championships being held in Invercargill who are most capable of producing medal winning performances.
The majority of selection weighting for the Track Team will be based on results achieved at the 2012 West Coast North Island Track Championships.
Tuesday nights racing fell victim to the wet summer and racing was called off so the Thursday was used as reserve day. An email was sent to the club on Wednesday morning asking for the Thursday night option to be advertised on the clubs website but as most sane people are on holiday at this time of the year, the request was not able to be actioned. Fortunately a wise group of eleven remembered the reserve day option and arrived for racing at the normal 5.45pm. While the numbers may have been down the talent clearly wasn’t as a number of records were either set or broken on the mild calm and overcast night.
A time trial is a good test of a cyclist’s ability. It is you racing the clock. No hiding in a bunch, no sharing the work to get to the finish. It is an honest event where very often success is measured by personal bests rather than winning events.
A 40 km time trial is a kind of gold standard for time trialists. The distance is a genuine challenge and riding close to or under an hour is a significant achievement for most riders.
Upcoming time trials within reasonable driving distance that I am aware over the summer months are listed below. Most of the 40km time trials are run by the Wellington Veterans Cycling Club, but I note that BikeManawatu has snuck one in as well. The events attract a small entry fee. Several riders from the Manawatu ride the Wellington events each season.
The time trials programmed for this year are:
With the championship part of the season about to begin the decision was made to resume the season a little early on the Thursday night rather than wait for the usual Tuesday night. While the 16 riders that rode was well down on the seasons average so far it was equal to the comparative years opening meeting last year. It was a mild night with a heavily overcast sky and a westerly wind that came in and out as the night went on, not strong enough to dominate the night but enough to be challenging to the riders not in the bunch.
The development of star track cyclist Jesse Sergent into a world class road rider was honoured at the BikeNZ Road and Track Cyclist of the Year Awards in Christchurch last night.
The 23 year old won the honour of Male Road Rider of the Year in a special function. He is one of six riders to receive awards. They included world championship medallist Linda Villumsen awarded female road rider of the year, world championship silver medallists Shane Archbold and Alison Shanks won the male and female track riders of the year, North Harbour’s James Oram is the best emerging talent while veteran Julian Dean was voted the People’s Choice Award.
Sergent, a silver medallist at the world track championships, enjoyed a remarkable maiden season for the high profile Radioshack team on road cycling’s Pro World Tour in 2011. While the team’s supremo Johan Bruyneel did not over-burden the Feilding rider in his first year, Sergent showed his potential with three prologue victories at the Driedaagse van West-Vlaanderen, the Eneco Tour and Tour du Poitiou Charentes. He went on to claim the overall honours in the Belgium and French stage races.