Men’s pursuit cycling team heads to key World Cup in New Zealand

The Canadian men’s pursuit cycling team, with Jay Lamoureux of Victoria, is expected to contend at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics.

The next step in the process takes Lamoureux, Aidan Caves of Vancouver, Derek Gee and Vincent De Haitre of Ottawa and Adam Jamieson of Barrie, Ont., to World Cup No. 5 beginning Friday in Cambridge, New Zealand.

“As one of the last two World Cups of the season, the Cambridge event forms a critical part of world championship and Olympic qualifying,” said Canadian men’s track endurance coach Jono Hailstone, in a statement.

“Cycling Canada is sending a strong contingent, and will be looking to take advantage of a slightly weaker field outside of Europe to put some top results on the board. Travelling to the southern hemisphere also provides the opportunity to log some training hours in a warm environment, which will greatly assist our preparation for the world championships at the end of February.”

Lamoureux and his Canadian mates first came to notice by winning the bronze medal at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia, last April and have challenged in World Cup races since then.

The 23-year-old Lamoureux, who also played in the school jazz band, turned to cycling on the 1994 Commonwealth Games Velodrome after running middle-distance track and cross-country at Oak Bay High.

He is the latest international track cyclist to come out of what is now known as the Westshore Velodrome, located behind the Q Centre, and which was saved only after a sustained effort by the local cycling community.

Others to have come out of the Colwood facility include 2012 London Olympic bronze-medallist Gillian Carleton of Victoria and 2015 Toronto Pan Am Games gold-medallist Evan Carey of Oak Bay.

SWIMMING: The race to Tokyo 2020 has also begun in the pool. Faith Knelson of Ladysmith, who trains with the High Performance CentreVictoria at Saaanich Commonwealth Place, won silver Saturday in the women’s 50-metre breaststroke at the Pro Swim Series meet in Knoxville, Tennessee. That goes with the bronze medals in the men’s 400- and 800-metre freestyles won by Victoria teammate and SMUS-grad Jeremy Bagshaw, out of the NCAA Pac-12 Cal-Berkeley Bears. Danielle Hanus of HPC-Victoria was fourth in the women’s 200-metre IM.

Canada won 12 medals with the Canadian highlight of the meet being 2016 Rio Olympics multimedallist Penny Oleksiak’s gold in the women’s 50-metre butterfly.