Cycling: 'Sublime' race not enough for Gate

Aaron Gate was unlucky not to secure a bronze medal. Photo / Supplied

It has been described as the best performance never to earn a medal at a world champs.

That should provide Aaron Gate with some consolation as he contemplates fourth place
in the points race last night.

After being involved in several earlier breaks, Gate found Australian superstar Cam Meyer's wheel with 20 laps of the 160-lap race to go. They lapped the field to secure 20 points each but when they looked up at the board as the gun sounded, the Aucklander was five points off Meyer's lead and an agonising two points out of a deserved bronze medal.

Great Britain's Ben Swift finished second with 32 points and Belgian Kenny de Ketele won bronze.

"That's his first points race since October. It was sublime," said BikeNZ high-performance director Mark Elliott.

"He was in every move. It's the best performance I've seen that has not been rewarded with a medal."

Gate was philosophical about the result. He already has a bronze from the team pursuit, though he would have loved to join Westley Gough as two-time medallists here.
Gough earlier finished third in the individual pursuit.

"It was the longest 20 laps I've ever done in my life," he said of the two-man break with Meyer. "It's always disappointing to be fourth, but I left everything on the track so I can't be too disappointed.

"I had in my mind that the break I miss would be the one that sticks so I tried to make myself present in everything I could.

"It was one of those races where it was coming down to sprints, but with the team pursuit training I didn't quite have the extra bit of grunt in the sprints I needed."

Three-time points race world champion Meyer, widely considered the finest points racer in history, paid tribute to Gate.

"He helped me a lot out there," Meyer said. "I used him enough to recover enough and you could see with five to go he had just given me enough to recover so I could put in two big laps to bridge to the peloton and take the lap.

"It was good to have someone out there to swap turns with."

Gate said that at times he felt like he was slowing Meyer down, but "I held on with all my might and was pretty poked by the end of it".

Despite Gate's heroics counting for nothing, BikeNZ is still poised for its biggest medal haul at a world championship after Gough upset the formbook.

The Waipukurau rider stormed back from a 1.5s deficit with a kilometre to go to beat Australian Rohan Dennis by 1.6s. His final kilometre in the 4km race was a brilliant 1m 02.632s, more than 3s faster than his rival.

It was New Zealand's fourth medal of the championships, equalling their tally in Apeldoorn last year and Copenhagen in 2010. Gough's medal added to the bronzes already won by the men's team pursuit and team sprint, and Simon van Velthooven in the kilo.

With Alison Shanks riding the individual pursuit today and van Velthooven the keirin, there is a good chance New Zealand could add to that tally.