Stewart’s omnium title double proves elusive
A punishing schedule didn’t help New Zealand rider Campbell Stewart’s defence of his omnium title at the track cycling world championships in Berlin yesterday.
The 21-year-old from Manawatu finished fifth in the fourevent omnium a year after winning the world title in Poland.
He faced a likely Tokyo Olympics line-up featuring world champions and leading road race professionals in the omnium won by three-time world champion Benjamin Thomas from France.
Stewart was heavily marked, especially in a fast and furious points race, but a win in the elimination race pushed him to fifth overall. A day earlier, Southland teenager Corbin Strong had a stunning win in the points race.
Part of New Zealand’s Olympic preparations was to trial using Stewart in all three team pursuit races, the omnium, as well as today’s (NZT) 50km madison where he was to team up with Aaron Gate.
‘‘Running through the full team pursuit programme and the omnium definitely took a little bit out,’’ said Stewart.
‘‘The Olympics will be three team pursuits over three days and next day into the omnium. The hardest thing will be to keep switched on for four days – with a day off and then the madison on the sixth day.
Stewart placed sixth in the scratch race, 10th in the tempo race, won the elimination and finished 12th in the points race.
‘‘To race against Olympic champions and world champions and get some idea of how they race was important. To get the elimination win against that final group was pretty cool,’’ he said.
‘‘I was probably just a little bit off today so I know I need to push it a little further to really step it up leading to the Olympics so I can be in the top three, or if not to win it.’’
Following on from a disappointing effort in the team sprint, the New Zealanders couldn’t make their mark in the individual competition. Sam Webster set a national record of 9.615sec in qualifying, along with Ethan Mitchell (9.753sec).
However, Mitchell was beaten by triple Rio gold medallist Jason Kenny (Great Britain), while Webster was edged out by second fastest qualifier Jeffrey Hoogland (Netherlands) in a photo finish in the second round.
Jaime Nielsen was the best of the Kiwis to be seventh in qualifying for the individual pursuit in a personal best 3:26.508 with American Chloe Dygert breaking the world record twice on her way to the gold medal.