Cycling: Bronze consolation for pursuiters

The New Zealand men's pursuit team is getting used to the colour bronze but it is gold they crave most.

Yesterday, the immensely promising foursome of Jesse Sergent, Marc Ryan, Westley Gough and Peter

Latham claimed bronze at the world championships in Poland to go with the bronze the team picked up at last year's Beijing Olympics.

That took New Zealand's medal count to three with two days remaining, their most at a world championships, beating the two won at Maebashi (1990), Berlin (1999) and Melbourne (2004).

Dunedin's Ali Shanks won the women's individual pursuit and added a silver with Lauren Ellis and Jaime Nielsen in the women's team pursuit.

For Sergent, yesterday's bronze was some consolation after the disappointment of his fifth placing in the individual pursuit. He had gone into the event as one of the favourites but admitted inexperience cost him as he went out too fast and fell off the pace.

"It was a good learning curve for me," said Sergent, who will fly to Boulder tomorrow with team-mate Sam Bewley to join with their new Trek Livestrong professional road team which includes individual pursuit champion Taylor Phinney.

"But there are going to be plenty of days in the future for me. It was hard watching the final because I thought I should have been there but it gives me extra hunger for next time.

"The bronze medal definitely makes up for it because it's the first time the men's pursuit have won a medal at the world championships. We wanted to be in that gold medal rideoff, so that was disappointing, but to come back and beat Great Britain at their event was fantastic for us."
Great Britain have dominated team pursuiting, winning the 2007 and 2008 world championships, as well as last year's Olympics, although only one of the riders who claimed gold in Beijing rode in Poland.

The Kiwis qualified fourth fastest with a time of 4m 01.186s and were left ruing a slow start to their morning ride which saw them miss out on the gold-medal ride by 0.6s.

They were never really threatened by Great Britain, finishing 1.6s ahead of their more fancied opponents in 4m 00.248s.

The return of three medals is not unexpected. Bike NZ high performance manager Mark Elliott said heading into the world championships they could win as many as six.

Elliott has shifted New Zealand's focus off the road, where he says there are too many "uncontrollables", to the track and pursuiting in particular. He said the three medals proved the value of the programme, especially on top of the two Olympic medals won last year.

"I think anything where you're winning medals and winning them consistently on a world stage is great for any sport's profile," Elliott said. "We came here with the intention of winning medals and we brought athletes along who we believed would do that, so it's a step in the right direction.

"We're building towards London 2012, so this is obviously great that the sport is getting a width of medals across the programme."

Eddie Dawkins finished 10th in the 1km time trial and Ellis was 10th in the women's 10km scratch race.

New Zealand's best chance of adding another medal was with Hayden Godfrey, who will defend the world omnium title he won last year.