Cycling: Women's pursuit team at top of pile

Kaytee Boyd, Rushlee Buchanan and Jaime Nelson. Photo / Getty Images

The New Zealand women's cycling pursuit team strengthened their place at the top of the UCI World Cup rankings after victory over Canada in the final early yesterday morning.

Rushlee Buchanan (Te Awamutu), Kaytee Boyd (Waiuku) and Jaime Nielsen (Hamilton) won by over two seconds, on the opening night of the third World Cup in Beijing.

New Zealand lead Australia by seven points, with Canada third in the overall World Cup standings. The final round is in Manchester next month.

The team - without Commonwealth Games medallists Alison Shanks and Lauren Ellis - made a fast start, opening up a winning lead of 1.2s in the opening kilometre, stretching that to 1.7s at 2km and 2.2s at the finish.

Boyd said the win was just of the push towards the world championships in March.

"I would give us 6.5 out of 10," she said. "It was not our best performance time-wise, but the track here in Beijing was pretty cold. We will take the win but we still need to keep pushing forward."

The team achieved their aim of fastest to qualify.

"It was nice as the World Cup leaders to go last and know exactly what we had to do. Starting last was quite a benefit in that we could ride to a time and hold that little bit back for the final, which was great," she said.

The squad has another training camp and the national championships in Invercargill next month before the final World Cup in Manchester, with a final camp ahead of the world championships in Poland.

Invercargill's Tom Scully won the elimination race on the way to finishing sixth overall after the first day in the six-race men's omnium.

Earlier, Jo Kiesanowski and Natasha Hansen were 13th in the women's team sprint.