KEY POINTS:
New Zealand could be about to welcome a new heroine in the Sarah Ulmer cycling discipline - the women's individual pursuit - after Alison Shanks won a gold medal on the opening night of the World Cup track cycling in Beijing.
Men's individual pursuiter Jesse Sergent also produced a fine performance at the same speedy track at
Laoshan used for last year's Olympic Games in Beijing.
But Shanks - in her first competitive ride since the Olympics - shattered her Olympic time by a couple of seconds, as well as her own personal best, and now seems ready to ascend to the top rung.
Shanks produced a remarkable charge in her final, beating Latvia's Vilija Sereikaite, World Cup individual pursuit points leader, emphatically.
Shanks was fourth at Beijing,
narrowly missing a medal, but lowered her personal best yet again to 3:30.685 for the 3000m pursuit - two seconds under her best time at the Olympics and nearly a full second under her previous best set in the qualifying run on a cold Laoshan track on Friday.
Shanks was almost five seconds faster than Sereikaite in qualifying and she crushed the Latvian in the final.
Just to put her ride in perspective, Shanks was beaten in the bronze medal race at the Olympics by the
Ukraine's Lesya Kalitovska, who rode 3m 31.413s, so Shanks' latest time would have put her clear of the Ukrainian by almost a full second.
Shanks still would not have qualified for the gold medal race at the Olympics even if she had ridden her new time then - the spectacular
success of the British cycling team included the gold medal ride by Rebecca Romero (in 3m 28.321s) and the silver medallist Wendy Houvenaghel rode a 3m 27s in qualifying. No one got close to Ulmer's record of 3m 24.537s, set on that red letter day for New Zealand sport in Athens in 2004.
However, Shanks, 26, has been progressing quickly towards the top and has an encouragingly upwards curve - and she has a touch of
the Ulmers about her; a personable, confident woman with a broad streak of determination.
She turned to cycling in 2005 after a representative career for Otago in basketball and netball and came an impressive fourth in the individual pursuit at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne and ninth at the world championships. She improved to eighth at the worlds in 2007 and seventh last year, reducing her best time by nearly five seconds in 2008 and now by a further two.
Sergent, of Feilding, also turned in a brilliant performance to claim the gold when he caught Ukraine's Vitaliy Shchedov shortly after the 3km mark in the 4000m pursuit final.
Earlier Sergent, the key member of the Beijing Olympic bronze-medal winning team pursuit, was top qualifier with a magnificent 4m 17.962s qualifying performance. This pipped the previous New Zealand best set by
Beijing silver medallist Hayden Roulston in finishing fourth at last year's world championship.
Sergent was more than nine seconds faster than his nearest challenger in qualifying.
"It was a remarkable start to the competition for us," said BikeNZ national track coach Tim Carswell. "This is Alison's first competition since the Olympics and so to produce this quality of performance after four months off the track is outstanding.
"Every time she steps on to the track she seems to ride faster and is now in a position to begin to challenge the best in the world."
Carswell said Sergent was the strong man in the team pursuit at the Olympics and, with Roulston now with his new professional road team, had taken his opportunity.
"He has grabbed it with both hands. That's the fastest time ever by a New Zealander. It was a stunning performance."
Wanganui's Catherine Cheatley finished an encouraging sixth place in the final of the 10km women's scratch race, with Lauren
Ellis 22nd. Waipukurau's Wes Gough was 14th in the men's points race final.
Overnight New Zealand riders were riding in qualifying for the men's team pursuit, men's keirin, men's scratch race and women's points race.
- additional reporting from NZPA
