Bond set to shake and stir rivals
Time-trial specialist Hamish Bond is after back-to-back New Zealand titles at the Vantage road cycling national championships in Napier starting tomorrow, with Georgia Williams and Jason Christie holding similar ambitions.
Controversial 2018 champion Christie has the chance to go one better, as he also won the road race in 2016 – a third win would see him join the late Lance Payne and Hawke’s Bay’s former professional Vern Hanaray as three-time winners. Waikato powerhouse Jack Swart won four, with 2006 Commonwealth Games road time-trial medallist Gordon McCauley a five-time winner.
Commonwealth Games medallist Georgia Williams will defend her women’s timetrial and road race honours, while fellow Gold Coast medallist Bond defends in the elite men’s time-trial.
The championships, which run tomorrow to Sunday, have attracted 159 entries, with 83 males to contest the elite and under-23 road race honours.
Christie last year appeared to make a middle finger salute as he won, saying he had held up a finger on each hand to indicate he had now won the title twice.
His rivals include four UCI World Tour professionals comprising Halberg Award nominees George Bennett and Patrick Bevin, Dion Smith and Tom Scully.
They are joined by UCI Pro Continental rider Hamish Schreurs; two-time champion Joe Cooper; the 2018 runner-up Hayden McCormick and national criterium champion and Commonwealth Games mountain bike winner Sam Gaze.
Williams was in supreme form last year, winning both the time-trial and road race on her way to an impressive silver medal in the Commonwealth Games road race. Her expected breakthrough year on the world scene for her Mitchelton-Scott pro team was thwarted with a training crash later in the season. She will be looking to use the nationals to prepare for a big start to the year in a strong women’s field that includes the top five finishers from last year with Sharlotte Lucas (second), Kirsty McCallum (third), Alana Forster (fourth) and Racquel Sheath (fifth).
Also racing is four-time winner Rushlee Buchanan, who is part of the Vantage elite women’s track team preparing for the upcoming UCI World Cup in Cambridge.
She is joined by track riders Sheath, Holly Edmondston, Kirstie James and under-23 riders Michaela Drummond and Bryony Botha.
The men’s under-23 riders compete in the same race but will battle for the prestigious New Zealand Cyclist Corps Memorial Trophy, presented for the first time in January 2018.
The trophy honours Kiwi soldiers in the Corps, especially those who lost their lives in 1918 in the Battle of Kemmelberg, an area which is now a famous climb in World Tour races in Belgium.
Auckland’s James Fouche, who rides professionally for Team Wiggins in the UK, will defend that trophy, after also leading the New Zealand under-23 team in a Nationals Cup race that took place through those key WW1 battle spots, including the Kemmelberg, Ypres and the Menin Gate.
The championships begin on Friday with the time-trials on a course around the Church Road Winery, with the elite and under-23 women competing over one lap of 20kms. Williams, Buchanan and Bronwyn McGregor, who formed the podium this year, will ride again as will Mikayla Harvey and Libby Arbuckle, second and third respectively in 2018, returning in the under-23 division. Bond, who has turned his attentions to the track in recent times, will defend his title in the elite men’s timetrial over 40km from a field that includes 2016 winner Bevin and former under-23 champions in McCormick and James Oram, along with Christie, who was third in 2018.
Fouche, third in 2018, is the only podium placegetter returning in the under23 time-trial.
The road race is a similar course to 2018, with a rural circuit via Taradale to the Puketapu/Dartmoor Valley (56km for women and 82km for men to the startfinish on Marine Parade) before laps of an exciting city circuit that includes climbs of Napier Hill. The elite and under-23 women’s race from 10am on Saturday is 109km and the men’s elite and under-23 race from 8.30am on Sunday is 166km.