Record-breaking ride stuns new Games champion
Bryony Botha could not believe what she was seeing when she caught a glimpse of rival Maeve Plouffe out of the corner of her eye.
The 24-year-old track cyclist clinched her first gold medal in a Commonwealth Games record time of 3min 18.456sec after beating the Australian by a staggering 8.666 seconds to cap an utterly dominant women’s individual pursuit final.
Botha was stunned by her gold medal-winning ride, dipping under 3:19 for the first time. She has improved 17sec since her Commonwealth Games debut, when she finished ninth and missed the finals on the Gold
Coast in 2018.
After mowing Plouffe down over the final few laps of the 3000m race where the two competitors start on opposite sides of the track, Botha crossed the finish line right on the Australia’s back wheel.
‘‘It was such a shock,’’ Botha told Sky Sport. ‘‘I did not expect to catch her.
‘‘Maeve’s a strong rider and I thought we would be pretty even.
‘‘When I looked up and saw her there I was like I’m just going to use the draft and make the most of it.’’
Botha has come on leaps and bounds in 2022. After finishing last in the team pursuit at last year’s Tokyo Olympics, she has developed into a genuinely worldclass individual pursuit rider, now the third-fastest of all-time.
She provided a glimpse of her gold medal potential when she eclipsed Sarah Ulmer’s longstanding national record by posting a time of 3:24.256 at the Waikato-Auckland championships in January.
Ulmer set the record when she won gold at the Athens Olympics in 2004 and the time was so fast it remained a world record for six years.
Botha has lowered the national record another four times since then, including twice at the Commonwealth Games; in qualifying and then again in the gold medal ride.
Botha paced her ride to perfection in the final, bouncing back after losing to the Australian in the team pursuit final just 24 hours earlier.
After the first lap, only 0.265sec separated Botha’s slowest and fastest laps.
Botha is the fourth New Zealander to win the women’s individual pursuit at the Commonwealth Games, joining previous winners Alison Shanks (2010), Ulmer (1998 and 2002) and Madonna Harris (1990).
‘‘I honestly cannot believe it,’’ she told Sky Sport. ‘‘I wasn’t too sure how my legs would feel. In the warmup I was like ‘it will be what it will be’ and when I got there I just felt awesome and I kept going and I carried it.
‘‘When I looked up and saw my time I was like I cannot believe it.
‘‘Every race I do I just want to be better than the last time. Coming into this race today I just wanted to get a PB. A one-anda-half second PB is pretty big so I’m stoked with that.’’