Cycling: Simon van Velthooven scores bronze

Simon van Velthooven has scored bronze at the world track cycling champs. Photo / Supplied

Simon van Velthooven put an exclamation mark on New Zealand's arrival as a sprint-cycling power with bronze in the kilo time trial last night.

Van Velthooven picked up New Zealand's third medal, all bronze, of the world track cycling champs, clocking 1m 00.543s in the four-lap standing dash and beating his personal best by 0.6s.

The 23-year-old won bronze in his favoured keirin event at the Delhi Commonwealth Games two years ago, but this is his first medal at a world championship.

The kilo is a non-Olympic discipline but this will still give the man dubbed by high-performance director Mark Elliott as the next Sir Chris Hoy a lot of confidence leading into Sunday's keirin.

"It's very similar. It's a lactic tolerance effort, so I do the kilo to warm up for the keirin," van Velthooven said.

Not that he's belittling the kilo, which he describes as "gladiatorial". Harry Kent picked up New Zealand's first medal at a world championship in that event, at Leicester in 1970.

"The kilo is the most legendary event so to get a medal for New Zealand is quite a feat," said van Velthooven.

"I wanted to win. I was hoping for a 1m 00.7s so when I looked up and saw 1m 00.5s I thought it was going to be pretty hard to beat."

As it was France's Michael D'Almeida shaved .034s off his time and the last rider of the night, German star Stefan Nimke, rode both of them off the track with a stunning 1m 00.082s.

"He's a legend, hat's off to him," said van Velthooven.

It muddies the selection waters, with van Velthooven in a battle with Eddie Dawkins for the third wheel spot in the team sprint.

"All of my training this year has been for the team sprint," said van Velthooven, who rode third wheel at a Beijing world cup meeting this year. "To get medal in this is a reflection of how hard we've trained together and how hard I've trained."

Sprint coach Justin Grace said the competition between the five sprinters - Ethan Mitchell, Sam Webster, Dawkins, van Velthooven and Matt Archibald - was fierce but productive. The selectors had some big decisions before London, but it was a pleasant dilemma to be in.

"He [van Velthooven] didn't make the starting line-up this week but it's not to say he won't be there in the future."

Grace said van Velthooven lived for his bike.

"He loves riding his bike. He loves it so much we sometimes have to lock him in his room to keep him off it. He loves racing. He's a unique athlete in the sense he never gets down on it, he just wants to go and go and go."

In other action last night, Shane Archbold faces a battle to get back into contention in the six-event omnium after a poor points race, while Rushlee Buchanan finished 13th in the points race.

Archbold fared better in finishing sixth in the elimination race, finishing the first day sixth overall and six points out of the medals at the halfway stage.

In an ideal world, BikeNZ would like their eight-man team for London to include four team pursuit riders, an omnium rider and the team sprint, with Webster doubling up in the sprint and either Dawkins or van Velthooven riding the keirin.

If van Velthooven makes another statement on Sunday and Archbold struggles today, they could lean towards taking four sprinters.