Cycling: Anderson back riding and eyeing Olympics

Gary Anderson still gets niggling jabs in his right side. They are just to remind him that four months ago, he was lying in the critical care ward of a Pennsylvania hospital.

He keeps on riding. New Zealand's most successful cyclist is taking it softly, softly in his comeback from the track crash in August in which he punctured his lungs and smashed five ribs and came close to drowning in his own blood.

Anderson was told by doctors that the pains would come and go for a year. So things are going to schedule. Well, more like ahead of schedule.

Six weeks ago, 31-year-old Anderson got back on his road bike and took a short ride down the quiet streets of Wanganui. Now he is pedalling six days a week.

At the end of the road every day is the dream of the 2000 Olympics.

The man who won New Zealand's only Olympic track cycling medal - a bronze in 1992 - wants another shot.