Cycling fallout 'has cost friends'

New Zealand cyclist Liz Williams has made few friends in the national team amid this week's fallout from the drunken incident at the Commonwealth Games, a teammate says.

Fellow Games rider Tammy Boyd said Williams had made herself unpopular with teammates after the much-publicised incident involving two male cyclists at the Games in Melbourne in March.

This week Williams and her mother both publicly hit out at an unsafe culture of abuse and excessive drinking within the national team.

"The way most of the riders were towards her [Williams] by the end [of the Games], they were disappointed with what happened," Boyd told One News last night.

"I think she'll struggle. No one's going to give her a hard time but she's not going to have any best friends in the team any more I don't think."

Track riders Marc Ryan and Tim Gudsell this week escaped punishment for an incident - details of which both Cycling NZ and Williams have refused to divulge.

Williams this week spoke out, explaining she wanted to ensure women were safe in the team in future.

"In the future, if what happened to me happened to one of the girls I coach I would be really angry."

"We want to put a stop to this behaviour so any girl coming through now can go away with that team and have no problems at all."

Boyd, speaking from France, rejected Williams' claims that men in the team were abusive towards women. "Sometimes the guys give you a hard time, but they're just being silly, having fun like boys do when they get together," Boyd said.

"I've never had any issues with anything like that. The girls that I know quite well that are in the track team as well, they enjoy it, they have a good time with them."

One of the cyclists, Marc Ryan, told the Herald there was no booze culture in the team, as cyclists spent all their time in training.

"We don't drink for months before a competition," he said, but "everyone celebrates after a competition".

The national track team don't reassemble for competition until the first round of the World Cup at a yet-to-be confirmed venue in November.

BikeNZ chief executive Rodger Thompson said yesterday that coaches and officials would work to ensure the riders involved in the incident weren't "marginalised" and were fully supported at future events.

- NZPA, staff reporter