Oceania champs kick-start track season

Pieter Bulling in action for New Zealand

The track cycling season begins in earnest this week with a record 17-strong Southland contingent lining up at the Oceania Track Cycling Championships in Adelaide starting Wednesday.

Ten riders will start in New Zealand’s Elite and Under-19 squads while a further seven will ride in Cycling Southland colours over the four day championships which alternate between Australia and Invercargill annually.

As usual, we have had a pretty good view of preparations, outside our office window on Stadium Southland Velodrome and with scaled-back international campaigns scheduled for New Zealand’s track programme this season, the Oceania championships represent one of a limited number of opportunities for riders to impress.

As discussed in this column last week, with a new Olympic cycle beginning post-London, much interest will focus on the next wave of talent stepping into the Elite ranks and at how some of the experienced campaigners will back-up after the Olympics. Southland has riders in both categories.

Eddie Dawkins has quickly become one of the most experienced members of the elite squad and I have little doubt that the big fella will relish any extra leadership responsibility. He’ll have his good mate Matt Archibald alongside him who has certainly found strong training form over the last couple of weeks and will be wanting to send a clear message to the selectors that he is worthy of a world championship ride in February. Natasha Hansen will be hoping she can replicate her form from twelve months ago when she claimed three Oceania titles and a silver from her four starts.

The endurance squad features Sequoia Cooper who will have renewed focus with the strong possibility the Women’s team pursuit will move from three to four riders in Rio in 2016 along with Cameron Karwowski and Pieter Bulling who have both come off impressive European summers and strong PowerNet Tour of Southlands.

The Under-19 New Zealand squad is an early indication of those in the running for trips to Glasgow next August for the 2013 World Juniors. Jeremy Presbury will likely be one of the first names written down after his to fourth placings this year in Invercargill. He will take on the Super-Drome in Adelaide along with Josh Haggerty and first year Under-19s Mike Culling and Laura Heywood.

Meanwhile a further seven riders will wear the Southland skin-suit in Adelaide - Aimee Burns, Steph McKenzie, Bradley Tuhi, Matt Dodds, Karl Watson, first year under-19 Nick Kergozou and a returning Lee Evans who rode last year for Wellington where he is attending university. Of these, McKenzie looms as the strong contender for possible podium finish, showing some excellent training form over recent weeks.

The 2013 Oceania Track Championships in Adelaide begin Wednesday and conclude Saturday. On a local front the next key event is the Southland Track Championships to be held from Friday 7 to Sunday 9 December while the annual ILT New Year Track Carnival will be held on January 18th and 19th, leading in to the Elite and U19 National Championships starting January 31.

Big year leads to big plans

Hillside School learns to ride with Cycling Southland

With the end of the year quickly descending upon us, many organizations like Cycling Southland are in review/preview mode - reviewing the good, the bad and the ugly from the year that’s been and planning for 2013. Fortunately for cycling there has been plenty of good and, aside from some bloke Armstrong, not a lot of ugly.

Whilst the flag-ship events including our recent PowerNet Tour of Southland and the SIT-sponsored UCI Juniors Track World Championships are the big, shiny things most people remember, the work I am most proud of is at the club and entry levels of the sport.

To see the numbers coming through our beginner programmes on the track and road is really heartening. It is a real focus for us in the year ahead with an aim of continuing to make it easier for people to get on a bike with us and then to develop their skills to whatever level they desire.

The corner-stone of this is our soon-to-launch Pedaling Pathway. This is our new road rider education and development programme and for those new to the sport, (and those a little more experienced,) it will provide the skills and knowledge to achieve your cycling goals – whether that is to cycle around the block or to win a national title.

We are also aiming to significantly expand our hugely successful Learn to Ride programme in Southland primary schools. This is a wonderful partnership with Sport Southland and KiwiSport and our good mates at the Southland MTB and BMX clubs and it is at this level where our team is really making a difference.

Over the six weeks of the programme there are kids who have hardly been on a bike who are throwing away trainer wheels and have a new found confidence and a whole heap of fun along the way. We can’t wait to get to more primary schools next year.

Short story is there are some pretty exciting plans to capitalize on the high profile our sport has enjoyed over the past year, so be warned - you can expect to hear plenty more from us to join us for a ride.

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Whilst on the topic of things new, the latest UCI World Cup round in Glasgow this past weekend showed that the four-year changing of the guard which accompanies the Olympic Games cycle has already started.

The most notable examples were in New Zealand’s sole representative in Scotland, 17 year old Dylan Kennett, riding his way to fourth in the Men’s Individual Pursuit on Sunday and Great Britain’s Elinor Barker who, like Kennett, shone brightly at the Junior Worlds in Invercargill in August, partnering with World and Olympic champions Laura Trott and Dani King to win the Women’s Team Pursuit gold on Saturday.

We’ll get a first hand look at the new wave of talent at the Elite and Under-19 Track Nationals at Stadium Southland Velodrome from January 31st. That will be a fitting way to start another new year.

Nick Jeffrey is Cycling Southland's Chief Executive.

Future looks bright after awards night

Junior Boys SportsPerson Josh Carpenter & Nathan Cohen

On Friday night I was fortunate to play host at the annual Southland Secondary School Sports Awards. Southland’s 15 secondary schools recognised their classes of 2012 across a large number of sportsperson, participation, contribution and volunteer categories.

I was struck by a couple of things during the evening. Firstly, the opportunities these youngsters have to participate and perform in a huge number of sports. That’s down to the brilliant work our schools, our sporting clubs and our regional sporting organizations provide for Southlanders.

So often we in sport get caught up in the minute details and day to day struggles of our lives in sport, without stepping back and, even briefly, recognizing the great work that goes on in our province every week of the year.

Friday night provided another example of the role the humble volunteer plays in this picture. There are thousands upon thousands of volunteers who give their time so selflessly – not for money, not for glory but because they are passionate about the kids, their school and their sport.

There is no better example than our just-completed PowerNet Tour of Southland or our recent hosting of the UCI Juniors Track World Championships. Around these two events alone, there were approximately 12,000 hours volunteered. Put it in dollar terms that is a volunteer staff input of close to $250,000 and that’s just during the events themselves, let along the countless hours spent in preparation for large-scale events like these.

In many respects, it’s easier to recognize this contribution around events while the week-to-week contribution can sometimes tend to go unnoticed. However, it is literally the blood that pumps through Southland sport’s veins.

As the end of another year approaches, every sport – including Cycling Southland – owes another huge debt of gratitude to that passionate group of people that keep our organizations going through their unwavering passion and enthusiasm. It was wonderful to see a handful get worthy recognition on Friday night.

Reading out the lists of achievements on an international, national and regional level by those nominated for awards on Friday across a hugely diverse range of sports, proves again what a future Southland sport has.
Like many sports, cycling was well represented with Southland Boys High School’s Josh Carpenter continuing cycling’s fine tradition of a sixth-successive Junior Boys Sports-Person of the Year award. Kate Dunlevey, Jeremy Presbury, Michael Culling and Josh Haggerty were all nominated as senior finalists and they are showing no signs of slowing down.

Presbury, Culling and Haggerty will be joined by Laura Heywood in BikeNZ’s U19 squad for the Oceania Track Champs in Adelaide at the end of this month, while Eddie Dawkins, Matt Archibald, Pieter Bulling, Cam Karwowski, Natasha Hansen and Sequoia Cooper have all made the Elite squad.

Add Culling and Haggerty’s selections in the BikeNZ Road Development squad along with Central Otago’s Liam Aitcheson and Georgia Vessey and there is plenty to look forward to. If Friday night’s awards were a look into the sporting future, ours could not be more promising.

Nick Jeffrey is Cycling Southland's Chief Executive.

Another tour, another long list of thanks

The tour heads to Crown Range. Photo by James Jubb

Cycling Southland’s 2012 PowerNet Tour of Southland is in the books and what a race.

By now you will have read of Mike Northey’s incredible come-from-behind victory over the final 30 kilometres of our seven day race. One of the real joys of working in the sporting sector is getting an up close look at incredible moments like this and being able to witness the drama, the elation and the bitter disappointment that played out between Winton and Invercargill on Saturday afternoon.

So often in road races, the result is more or less locked down and the final stage can be something of an anti-climatic doddle to the line. Not so on Saturday where riders told me afterwards the 79 kilometre final stage was the hardest they have ever ridden. The pace went on right from the start and to quote Jerry Stock, who provided commentary during Cue TV’s wonderful coverage of the event, riders were “kicking stones up struggle street” right from the get-go.

It was a dramatic end to another brilliant event and one which was another huge success. International cycling hasn’t has the best of months with the scars from the Lance Armstrong saga still very fresh. While that represents the worst of cycling, what we witnessed over the past week is the best. We are incredibly thankful for the spectacle we were treated to and the way in which the 2012 Tour field conducted itself on and off the bike.

Thanks goes out to our incredible volunteers, our 2012 media contingent and to our fantastic funders and sponsors who make it all possible. No list is complete without Bruce, Pam and the Ross family. Most won’t realize what an undertaking this event is and how consuming in time and energy it becomes. We owe you all another huge debt of gratitude.

2012 was also notable as PowerNet’s last as major sponsor of the event. Prospects for the future are positive and, as with any change, it provides opportunity, but our first job is to recognize PowerNet’s phenomenal contribution to this iconic Southland event.

I am not over-stating the case to say the event would not be where it is today without PowerNet. Their input has been so much more than a writing of a cheque. Their financial contribution has been significant, but the way in which their team, headed by the incredible Lyn Daly, has embraced the event and made it their own is where our real fortune has been.

The PowerNet name will forever be associated with the Tour of Southland and whatever the future holds for the event and wherever it takes us, it is on the back of their twelve years of outstanding support.

Now the focus returns to the track. Next up are the Oceania Track Championships in Adelaide later this month and, closer to home, the Southland Track Champs are in December, building up to the Track Nationals in late January.

Before then, hopefully, you will forgive us if we take a couple of days off.