Van Velthooven keen to keep pedalling in next campaign
By Grant Chapman
Cycling has seen the last of Olympic medallist Simon van Velthooven — he’s been well and truly bitten by the sailing bug.
Van Velthooven, who took keirin bronze at the 2012 London Olympics, became one of the secret weapons in Team New Zealand’s arsenal, as they snatched the America’s Cup off Oracle Team USA this week.
While rivals stuck to traditional arm-grinding systems to generate power around their high-speed catamarans, the Kiwis revolutionised the event by introducing a cycle system that proved far more efficient.
Van Velthooven now plans to swap his bike full-time for something that floats.
“It’s a great sport and you learn the basics bloody quickly, when you’re sailing these catamarans with Glenn Ashby and Peter Burling every day,” van Velthooven, 28, told Newstalk ZB’s Tony Veitch. “Hopefully, I can put my skills to use and go out sailing with some of the guys in Auckland.
“I’ve had offers from a few guys on the boat here to go sailing on their monohulls, so I’m looking forward to the Kiwi summer to do that. It’s a new challenge and times change. I didn’t get bored with cycling, but there are new and exciting things you want to do with your life . . . sailing’s now one of them.”
While no decisions have yet been made about the format for future America’s Cup defences, van Velthooven was enthusiastic about continuing with Team NZ.
“Absolutely, it’s a great team and great banter and great guys,” he said. “We all enjoy working here and, sure, there are tough days, but if everyone chips in and gives 100 per cent, you can end up winning the bloody America’s Cup.”
He recalled the first day he turned up to the Team NZ compound to test their new ideas on cycle-grinding.
“They just had a couple of containers and we were sweating away inside a 40-foot container in the middle of February. The numbers were good and that was where it started. “It was just a matter of time, getting the hardware sorted. The idea was never going to go away, it was just a long process of physically building it and working out how the system was going to work.”