Cycling: Pursuit riders lament their lost chance

New Zealand's trivial team pursuit to the Commonwealth Games bronze posed an interesting - and frustrating - question destined to go unanswered: Could they have gone one better without a qualifying ride meltdown?

While the world champion English quartet were streets ahead of the small five-nation field, the crestfallen New Zealanders thought they had the measure of Australia had Jason Allen not blown up in their opening ride at the Vodafone Arena on Saturday.

Allen surprisingly rode up the bank and pulled out with 1km of the 4000m journey to travel, putting pressure on Hayden Godfrey, Tim Gudsell and Marc Ryan to post a gold medal-contending time in his absence.

Unfortunately the trio came up 8/10ths of a second short, and had to depressingly watch England and Australia fight it out for the endurance event's only real prize.

Their mood was hardly enhanced when it became apparent the New Zealanders were actually going faster in their cruise to bronze at snail-paced Malaysia's expense than Australia clocked in the final by half way.

There is no way of telling if New Zealand would have sustained that momentum because they caught the Malaysians soon after to end the mismatch.

However, a gutted Gudsell had no doubt silver was attainable.

"It's a pretty hollow feeling. If things had have gone right for us [in qualifying] we would have been in the final.

"That's team pursuiting ... A couple of guys had an off day."

Godfrey was also struggling but Allen's withdrawal deflated the New Zealand challenge.

BikeNZ endurance coach Terry Gyde had no inkling Allen was below par before he lined up.

"Jason warmed up and didn't tell us he wasn't going so good," Gyde said.

"He's clearly a member of the team but when you're having a bad day them's the breaks ... you get replaced by someone who could do a better job."

Gyde said Allen was an automatic choice based on trial form two days before.

"Jason was the strongest but in 48 hours a hell of a lot changes," he said.

Gyde found it hard to put the bronze medal finish into words.

"I don't think there's a word in the New Zealand dictionary that describes the disappointment. It's gut wrenching.

"We were on pace for the final - going through 2km we were just 3/10ths of a second slower than the Brits."

Allen was replaced for the bronze medal ride by Peter Latham who received his Games souvenir after completing just eight laps of the track.

"It was pretty painful being on the sideline this morning when we slowed down in the last k - we came here to win gold and we had to settle for bronze."

The Te Awamutu rider, who will compete in the road time trial and road race tomorrow and Sunday, said the team were still determined to go out hard despite knowing they would easily account for the Malaysians - who were 17s slower in qualifying.

"We were going flat out to make a point - we would have liked to have kept on going but we thought we'd catch them at the 2000m mark.

- NZPA