Kiwi cyclist gets lucky break after bad one
Despite beating the rush to secure a voucher for managed isolation, Kiwi cyclist Ella Harris almost did not make it back to New Zealand last week.
Shortly before she was scheduled to fly home from Europe, Harris was shocked to discover the date on her voucher did not match up with that on her plane ticket.
But with MIQ vouchers sold out through to the middle of December, Harris, who rides for Canyon-SRAM on the women’s world tour, was unable to change her booking and had to cough up an extra $4000 for another flight to avoid spending Christmas alone in a hotel room.
‘‘I actually made a major stuffup when it came to my voucher,’’ Harris said from her managed isolation facility in Hamilton.
‘‘It was a week before I was supposed to be leaving, I just decided to check the Qatar Airways app, to make sure your flight is still going, because a few had been getting cancelled, and I realised the landing date in Auckland on the Qatar app did not match the date I had on my voucher. I was a day out.’’
Harris was one of the fortunate returning Kiwi athletes to have secured a managed isolation voucher for November, meaning she will be free to spend Christmas at home with her family in Dunedin.
Although she was aware of New Zealand’s recently established voucher system, it was only when another pro rider mentioned that flights were starting to dry up that Harris decided to finalise her travel plans, just before she marked her return from a broken leg to compete at the season-ending Ceratizit Challenge by La Vuelta.
‘‘I just happened to go out for dinner one night in Girona with Hayden McCormick, another New Zealand cyclist, and he said to me: I have been talking to my travel agent and things are not looking good, there are not too many options,’’ she said.
‘‘I just got there in the nick of time and if I was not told the flights were drying up, then I would probably be in a similar situation [to those who have missed out].’’
Although she was hoping for a hotel in Christchurch, as it would be closer to her family home in Dunedin, she was pleasantly surprised with her managed isolation set-up in Hamilton.
She has spent the first half of her two-week stay riding her bike on a stationary trainer, which Cycling New Zealand dropped off, enabling Harris to continue her recovery from the broken leg she suffered in August.
‘‘When the leg break happened, I have had a challenging, rough few months. It has been fine but the recovery has just taken a little extra toll so it will be nice to be back for summer, back on familiar roads and to see friends.’’