Monday, March 25, 2013

Tour de Lakes kicks off road season

This weekend emphasised we are in sporting silly season where winter and summer codes cross-over.

The Highlanders kept their 100 percent record, the Steel did the same with their winless streak in Australia over the last five years and the Black Caps showed enough to keep us interested at Eden Park.

From a cycling point of view it means the focus moves from track racing on the Velodrome to out on the road. And it all starts this weekend with the annual Vital Signs Tour de Lakes around Central Otago.

For most, Easter weekend means an extended chance to recharge after a hectic start to the year. For our energetic Tour de Lakes manager Allan Dunn, it is the culmination of months of hard work.

If there's a man in our club with more energy and passion for the sport than Dunny, I'm yet to meet him. He grabbed this event and over recent years has taken it to a new level, solely on the back of his enthusiasm and commitment to the sport and the Easter tour.

This event is very much pitched at the weekend warrior. It's the chance for club riders to test themselves over four days of racing starting with Friday's Prologue time trial to Cromwell and six road stages around Queenstown, Five Rivers, Te Anau and Glenorchy, finishing on Easter Monday.

This year, the event has another element as a perfect lead-up race to the 2013 Club Road Nationals later next month.

Our colleagues at the Central Otago-Wakatipu Cycling Club hosts the largest road and track national championship from April 18 to 21 in Queenstown. With over two weeks to entries closing, numbers look strong with over 600 predicted to take part across 14 different age categories in male and female grades.

The racing will be held on the same course we hosted last year's successful Oceania Road Championships on. A 25 kilometre loop course from Speargrass Flat Road around Millbrook, down Malaghans Road to the Coronet Peak turn-off before climbing Littles Road will test the senior age brackets, while a smaller loop down Hunter Road will be utilised for the junior and older masters' categories.

It will be a tough test, but that's the way it should be when it comes to winning national titles. Southland is a dominant force on the track courtesy of having Stadium Southland Velodrome open all hours, throughout the year, but the performance on the road at national level has been less prevalent over recent years.

The hope is, that with the nationals so close (it's the first time they will be in the South Island since 2009), a large Southland contingent will be on show over the four days of racing.

It won't be the gold-rush we are accustomed to reporting on during Track Nationals, but it will be a key building block in a longer term plan over the next three years to put Southlanders on national road podiums. What better place to start than Queenstown.

Nick Jeffrey is Cycling Southland's Chief Executive

Monday, March 18, 2013

The art of prepping for the future

The key to writing a good column is to make sure I capture you, the reader’s, attention in the first paragraph. I’m taking my life in my hands by this week focusing on the key task facing Cycling Southland over coming weeks – strategic planning.
The mere mention of those two words tends to generate a glassy-eyed look and a quick change in conversation, yet they are the foundation that any sport, business or organisation is built on.

I’ve always thought of a strategic plan like a road map. If you gave me an address and asked me to get there without a map, I would probably eventually arrive – but without the direction a map (or strategic plan) provides, I would likely waste a lot of time, energy and money in getting there.

Cycling in Southland is at an interesting juncture. The sport continues to grow at a rapid rate at competitive and recreational levels. Each year we host local, national and international events and after the success of last year’s Junior World Track Championships, the public has a greater appetite for international competition. When you add in the development of a second velodrome in Cambridge in 2014 and what that will mean for Invercargill’s facility, this is the perfect time to create an exciting roadmap for the sport in the south.

It’s a really exciting process to go through. There are plenty questions. Finding answers is the fun bit. The question we get asked most often relates to the Cambridge velodrome. As a consequence, I’ve got pretty good at answering it.

We already have assurances from BikeNZ that events will continue to be hosted in Invercargill and that arrangement is to be formalized over coming months. It’s hard to give you an idea of just how much work is involved in hosting events like the recent Elite and Age Group Championships. Our staff of just five and our incredible volunteers (another 40 or so) collectively put in weeks of work to deliver nine long days of racing over the champs and that comes at a real cost. Two facilities sharing championship events will not only make that workload more sustainable, avoiding burn-out locally, but it will also allow Cycling Southland to concentrate on our bread-and-butter – putting more Southlanders on bikes.

Stadium Southland Velodrome is a community facility first and foremost. It will continue to host major events (the Oceania Championships and a new UCI Level 1 track event are both ear-marked for Invercargill later this year) and with the development of an integrated national calendar and the opening of a rebuilt Stadium Southland, we’ll get the best of both worlds – high profile marquee events with more time and space to continue to develop the sport at a grass-roots local level.

Opportunity abounds. Over these next few weeks, we’ll be refining our road-map so that we’ll be able to turn that opportunity in to more success. It should be a fun ride.

Nick Jeffrey is the Chief Executive of Cycling Southland.

Monday, March 4, 2013

Season highlights on and off track

The curtain came down on the track cycling season on Saturday night as Cycling Southland's hosting of the 2013 Age Group Track Nationals proved another outstanding success.

At the end of five great days of competition there is plenty to reflect on. It may surprise that my favourite moment occurred away from the track. Believe it or not the thing I remember fondly is the Southland team photo shoot. Our Cycling Southland squad of 68 riders, spanning seven decades, standing together in team colours, along with our large support crew who put so much into another successful Southland campaign is a pretty impressive sight.

For the sixth successive year, the National Points Shield will spend the year at Stadium Southland Velodrome after Southland finished the two track championships with a 140 point tally, 40 clear of Auckland.

Of all the myriad of events we deliver throughout the course of the year, the age group champs are one of my favourites. It's the mix of riders that I enjoy seeing on display. You have the wily veterans in the masters, the boundless enthusiasm and "give-everything-a-go" attitude of the juniors and, in between, the under-17s who are now starting to select the type of races that suit their talents.
This year also included the addition of the under-19 and elite women's omniums and Laura Heywood's gold and Josh Haggerty's silver medal in the under-19 were brilliant performances.
Glasgow may be calling later in the year, for the Junior World Track Cycling Championships, with the pair's form over recent weeks pushing their cases for selection, and both are chances to join Liam Aitcheson and Jeremy Presbury in the squad.

Yet again, the brilliant efforts by Southland's masters men and women masters proved one of the key differences in the Points Shield battle and a number of this contingent have their eyes on Manchester for the World Masters Championships. Given that, Eddie Dawkins' brilliant silver medal winning ride at the World Championships and Dawkins and Matt Archibald's Mexico World Cup medals in January, 2013 is shaping as perhaps the most successful year yet in international competition.

Trying to pick out individual performances from an event like the age groups is fraught with danger.

There is no shortage of worthy results, the danger is in leaving out a notable effort. I think I am safe to mention a young fellow from Palmerston North, though. Campbell Stewart won all four under-15 gold medals at last year's championships and this year he added six golds and a silver medal.
Yes, you did read that right. He won the under-17 boys' sprint, individual pursuit, points race, scratch race, team pursuit and team sprint golds. Perhaps Waikato's Lewis Eccles should be named rider of the championship for being the only rider to beat Stewart into second place in the under- 17 boys' time trial.

A massive thanks to all those who helped last week. Now, let's go road racing.

Nick Jeffery is Cycling Southland's chief executive.