Australia dominated the pursuit events, winning both teams titles on the second day of competition at the UCI Track World Cup in New Zealand.
Alex Edmondson, Jack Bobridge, Michael Hepburn and Luke Davison rode a blistering time of 35:53.010 to take the gold medal in the men’s event and in doing so set a new Australian record. The New Zealand quartet of Cameron Kawowski, Regan Gough, Alex Frame and Pieter Bulling started strongly but the Australians were able to pull away to eventually win by more than four seconds.
“New Zealand has the world champion bands on and they’re in their home town. Of course it was going to be a big ask, but we had to back ourselves and know that we’ve done the training,” Edmondson said.
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“We wanted to go fast. In round one we went 3:55 with catching Switzerland, so we knew we wanted to go fast, but to ride 3:53.00 is an Australian record for us. We’re pretty rapt that we’ve come away with a very fast time and the gold medal. I don’t think we could do much better than that so it is just making sure that we can do that for the big dance in Rio.”
Germany proved too fast for the Netherlands in the race for the bronze medal, although their victory was only by less than a second. Great Britain won the ride off for fifth place, beating France.
Earlier in the evening the Australian women’s team pursuit had claimed an emotional victory in a close race against Canada. It was a tight competition over the 4000m with Georgia Baker putting in a heroic effort in the final laps to deliver Australia the gold by a mere five hundredths of a second.
“It was a really close battle out there,” said Amy Cure who joined on the podium by Australian teammates Ashlee Ankudinoff, Georgia Baker and Isabella King.
“We knew it was going to be tough so we just had to stick to our schedule. The last couple of laps we were just racing them and we knew they were up the whole time. To get across the finish line and look up and see number one was very special for all of us.”
New Zealand’s Rushlee Buchanan, Lauren Ellis, Jaime Nielsen and Georgia Williams did not disappoint the home crowd in the ride for bronze taking a convincing win over the USA.
Team Sprint and Keirin
In the men’s team sprint Germany who emerged the victors, relegating New Zealand into silver. The 2014 world champions Ethan Mitchell, Sam Webster and Eddie Dawkins managed to out-power the Germans in the first two laps but couldn’t sustain the pace for the final lap, finishing just a split second down on the German trio of Rene Enders, Max Nierderlag and Joachim Eilers.
“We won the qualification yesterday and today we wanted to be a little bit faster but that’s ok,” said Enders. “I think we have to do a lot of work for the Worlds (Championships) and the Olympic Games but we’re on our way.”
The race for bronze saw Australia’s Nathan Hart, Peter Lewis and Matthew Glaetzer riding for outclass Great Britain’s Philip Hindes, Jason Kenny and Callum Skinner.
Women’s team sprint world champions Jinje Gong and Tianshi Zhong of China continued their World Cup dominance. They beat the Australian pair of Stephanie Morton and Kaarle McCulloch.
Following on from his team sprint success, Joachim Eilers made it two Keirin World Cups in succession with a brilliant victory in the final in the sprint event. The 25-year-old German made a late run on the final lap to secure the narrowest of wins, holding out compatriot Maximilian Levy and American Matthew Baranoski.
Australia’s Stephanie Morton proved no match for world champion Kristina Vogel in the battle for the women’s sprint title. Vogel (Germany) won both heats by a bike length to claim the gold medal after a solid performance by 25-year-old Morton. Lithuania’s Simona Krupeckaite claimed the bronze medal after three close races against China’s Shuang Guo.
After the first three events in the Omnium competition, Christopher Latham (USA) and Kirsten Wild (Netherlands) lead with the final three events during Sunday’s final day of racing.
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