Cycling: NZ juniors win gold

The New Zealand sprint team won gold on the opening night of finals at the junior world track cycling championships in Moscow overnight (NZT).

The trio of Ethan Mitchell, Sam Webster and Cameron Karwowski prevailed in the gold medal ride-off against Germany in one minute 00.236 seconds after they topped the qualifying session earlier in the day.

It is the first time any New Zealand cyclist - individual or team - has won a sprint medal at any world championship event or Olympic Games.

"It is an outstanding performance," said high performance director for BikeNZ Mark Elliott.

"Sam and Ethan have been developing well and produced some promising results at the junior worlds last year and again at the Youth Olympics in Sydney earlier this year.

"But their development along with Cameron Karwowski has been exceptional this year."

Mitchell and Webster are Aucklanders while Karkowski hails from Southland.

"The key has been the outstanding work from the BikeNZ sprint coach Justin Grace whose focus and attention to detail has really rubbed off on these guys," Elliott said.

"He has been New Zealand's pre-eminent sprinter in recent years and now is doing a superb job as a coach.

"Sprinting has been the domain of the Europeans in the main over many years, so to go to the heart of European cycling in Russia and win a gold medal in the team sprint from New Zealand is a very significant result."

It is only the fifth gold medal that New Zealand has won at the junior world track championships.

They follow Alan Miller in the kilo time trial at Wanganui in 1983, Sarah Ulmer in the individual pursuit and points race at Quito in 1994 and the team pursuit in 2005 in Austria.

- NZPA