The New Zealand women’s cycling team pursuiters turned in an astounding effort in the qualifying round at the Paris Olympics.
The quartet - Bryony Botha, Emily Shearman, Nicole Shields and Ally Wollaston - smashed the national record by 3.8 seconds at Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome and qualified fastest for Wednesday’s first round, blitzing all the other big names in world cycling.
LATEST HEADLINES:
They lit up the velodrome and became a major talking point of the session.
New Zealand will meet the fourth-fastest qualifiers, Italy, with the winner to go through to the gold medal race. The USA and Great Britain race off in the other semifinal.
The New Zealanders rode seventh in the field of 10, but their fantastic time of 4 minutes 04.679 seconds (just a whisker outside the world record) held up against the three big teams who followed, USA, Great Britain and defending champions Germany.
The previous New Zealand record, set early last year, was 4:08.440, so Tuesday's effort took the team into uncharted territory.
Botha, a double world championship medallist in the individual pursuit, said the team was pleased with their effort.
“We were trying to be very process focused, stay calm and look after each other and we managed that,” Botha said.
She said they were aiming for a time of about 4:07, but when they started hearing the lap times and realised how fast they were going “we decided to run with it and ended up holding it, so we were really happy”.
Botha said the team would definitely be looking to go even quicker on Wednesday.
“We’ll have another team to race against, so we’ll be looking for a faster time and will be going for the world record.”
In the men’s team pursuit, New Zealand, who’d been timed at 3:45.616 for sixth place in their qualifying round the previous day, faced Belgium.
The New Zealand team of Aaron Gate, Campbell Stewart, Tom Sexton and Keegan Hornblow uncorked a really quick time to overpower the Belgians. New Zealand’s 3:43.776 was nearly two seconds faster than what they recorded in their heat.
The New Zealand men will ride off for fifth place against France on Wednesday, missing out on the ride for bronze by just 0.559 seconds.