Aaron Gate was named New Zealand flagbearer for the closing ceremony after winning four golds. Photo / Getty
Aaron Gate created Kiwi sports history with four gold medals at the Commonwealth Games.
The Auckland cyclist - who is based in Spain - capped his brilliant campaign in England by winning the road race, having scored three track triumphs.
The 31-year-old was a star long before that, his career including an Olympic bronze medal in 2012 and the world omnium title a year later.
Away from the glare of representing New Zealand at major events, he is a kingpin with the Black Spoke team - a third-level pro squad - and won the Tour of Greece this year.
Gate chats to the Herald from Girona.
What was it like setting a Kiwi record, with four Games golds?
It's an epic privilege. It was great being able to ride in five events and be physically at the top of my game. The main goal was the team pursuit and winning that set the tone for myself and the wider team.
A highlight?
That road race sticks in my mind vividly as a highlight.
I didn't go into the road race feeling a lot of pressure - I thought it would be a supportive role and I'd had already my time in the limelight.
And it felt disjointed, moving between the track and road settings, from London to Birmingham.
As it happened, I ended up in the breakaway, and then that pressure was well and truly on. It was great to convert that into a victory.
How did you discover cycling?
I was brought up in Royal Oak. I started at Onehunga High School then we shifted into a much smaller house to be in the Auckland Grammar zone.
I had intended to get into mountain biking but I forgot about the meeting during lunch and went to the road cycling meeting the next day instead. Dad (Murray) had been a club cyclist - I grabbed his old road bike and it snowballed from there.
We did an individual time trial along the waterfront and I came second or third against kids who had been doing it for a while. A few teammates accused me of turning around too early. I thought 'maybe I'm not too bad at this'.
It took a while for mum (Annette) to come on board with me going out on the Auckland roads though. When I was six, dad had a bad accident riding to work and spent a fair bit of time in intensive care. Luckily, I had no major incidents.
Did you get the cycling bug straight away?
It was such an adrenaline rush racing bikes, compared to soccer and tennis and squash, which I had been doing. And I'd always been a bit uncoordinated with ball-handling skills. I fell in love with cycling I suppose.
We had a good group of guys [at Auckland Grammar], a feeling of camaraderie, giving all for the team. It was a really cool sport to be involved in. And I liked how the amount of training you put in directly computed to getting faster.
If you weren't a pro cyclist?
After school, I enrolled to do a four-year electrical engineering degree at AUT. I missed the first week because I was competing at the national track championships. I started in the second week and was really enjoying it. I remember getting a call from a number I didn't recognise. I ducked out of the lecture room and it was Tim Carswell the national coach, asking if I wanted to race in Belgium for a couple of months and in the States after that with the national team. They were bringing through a new wave of riders post the Beijing Olympics.
I quickly withdrew from the university, shot down to the enrolment office and got a full refund.
Has it been a tough sport financially?
Initially I got the Prime Minister's scholarship and a small living allowance of $1000 every six months. I was also working at a timber yard driving forklifts in the offseason.
Power metres on bikes were becoming mainstream when I started out - they measure all our data and were bloody expensive, a few grand. I borrowed money from mum and dad to buy that and eventually managed to pay them back with some part-time work.
High Performance Sport and Cycling New Zealand covered our expenses but in Belgium, we'd go to local races wearing different jerseys so they wouldn't work out we were New Zealand teammates. We'd try and win as many primes (intermediate sprints) as possible. Sometimes you'd get a fruit basket, sometimes 50 euros in cash, maybe a couple of bottles of beer. That's how we would make ends meet. We'd be in cahoots rather than trying to beat each other.
It was about making money from day to day. I'm lucky now that cycling pays the bills, and we can live a pretty comfortable lifestyle.
There are pros and cons with a lot of time away on the road. But I wouldn't trade it for the world. It's pretty bloody cool, the number of countries where I've got to race my bike.
Are you haunted by that crash in the 2021 Olympics team pursuit bronze medal race, when you touched a teammate's wheel?
Only when teammates take the piss out of me…still.
As soon as I came back from hospital, Jordan Kerby suggested they sign me up for a course on how to ride a bike in a straight line.
It was so frustrating, but I've moved on from it well and truly. Winning the same event at the Commonwealth Games settles the dust there too. It was extra motivation for me because I had let my teammates down at the Olympics.
What memories stick out from the team pursuit bronze medal at the 2012 Olympic Games in London?
It had taken me a while to break into the team and I was the 21-year-old who didn't want to stuff up. It was such a high-pressure moment.
I remember feeling like 'I don't want to be here now, I don't want to do this again'.
It was so scary during the 50-second countdown. I looked down and could see every crack in the velodrome surface.
Once we started racing, I was straight into the familiar feeling - the flow state we call it.
I almost did stuff up though, nearly missing a turn in the semifinal after we'd already lost Marc Ryan. My coach (Simon Funnell) told me he almost had a heart attack.
It was pretty cool winning the bronze, and it has pride of place. I took it for a few nights out on the town but it's now kept safe with mum and dad.
World cycling is a mystery to many people - any anecdotes?
Black Spoke do a variety of races, from amateur to pro level. The amateur ones are almost the hardest. You go to these races in France with 150 guys and just because they're wearing the same jerseys doesn't mean they are teammates. You might have five guys from one team all trying to win the sprint finish themselves. You end up with crashes and chaos, a lot more drama than in well-organised professional races.
In my first year as a professional, I'd jump on a team bus after a race, and be crammed in a shower with some random Austrian who doesn't mind getting his bits and pieces out - it's a different way of life in Europe.
And there are rivalries within teams and that's where things don't often work out, when you've got guys with hidden agendas and egos at play.
But that doesn't just apply to cycling. If you have a team working toward a common goal, it is always more likely to work out.
Who were your sporting heroes?
Sarah Ulmer was a huge motivator. Even more meaningful were the pursuit guys and Hayden Roulston in the individual pursuit as well at the 2008 Olympics. I was fresh from competing at the world juniors, and to watch the Kiwis win a medal at the highest level was cool. It was surreal to be racing with those guys four years later.
Pundits are now asking: Why has Aaron Gate not been picked up by one of the top professional teams in Europe?
Maybe one regret I have from the early stages of racing overseas is treating it as part of my training for the next Olympics on the track. I wasn't as hungry about chasing success on the road as I should have been. It delayed my progress and the ability to chase a spot on a big team.
Sometimes it can be about timing. When my previous team folded, others did at the same time, meaning there were suddenly 50 guys on the market chasing five spots in pro teams.
Has the gold medal haul changed your cycling future?
It has definitely sparked up interest from several international European-based teams who have put offers on the table for next season. But I'm happy to stay with Bolton Equities Black Spoke. It's got me to where I am.
And after so many years racing with all sorts of nationalities, it's refreshing to be with like-minded Kiwis who really support each other, to go back to the grassroots of why I love it, racing hard with a group of mates.
Your wife has joined you in Europe?
Kirstie and I were high school sweethearts. We were at Onehunga High School together then went on a double date after I had gone to Auckland Grammar, when we were 15. We've been together ever since. She was an insurance underwriter and has put her life on hold to join me here since 2017. And we've got our second child due in December.
There are often questions around the funding of top athletes - is everything in place for the next Olympic bid?
It is definitely a challenge for us. How do we get the funding to make us go faster on the velodrome?
Cycling is the Formula One of the Olympics - track cycling takes a lot of money. If we keep riding the 2014 bikes there's no chance of competing against the Danes, Italians and Brits with the amount of funding they have. It's something we've been trying to brainstorm.
The Commonwealth Games results don't change anything for us, because the world champs are the pinnacle funding event.
The world track champs are in Paris in October and we don't even have the funding to do a training camp capable of putting us in contention for that.
We'll have to start reaching into our own pockets, and find someone who can help us out on a commercial scale. I do think we could be pretty valuable to a New Zealand company.
Do the elite bikes change that much over the years?
There are incremental changes. The other problem is our body positions on the bikes have changed quite a lot in the last eight years. We used to ride with our arms quite flat and far down, with a big space between head and hands.
The new position is more compact, steering from a higher position, which closes off your vision and makes it harder to maintain a straight line. The new bikes help with that - with a longer wheelbase and different style of handling.
Gears continue to get bigger, times keep coming down, speeds keep getting faster - it's something we keep working towards physically and technologically.
What are your remaining cycling dreams?
Definitely to ride in the Tour de France. I rode the Spain equivalent which was a surreal experience. Black Spoke could get enough UCI points to move up to World Tour status and get an automatic invite. That's a pie-in-the-sky dream, and not something we've talked about.
Further down the track I could jump ship to a bigger team if the opportunity arose. For the time being, I'm pretty content, still racing in some awesome places amongst stellar bike riders.
Winning an Olympic gold medal is still the biggest one. I know we were fourth (team pursuit) but we felt we were so close in Tokyo. It doesn't feel like it is out of reach. We are a strong group of like-minded riders investing everything mentally and physically. And to win another world title would be special.
A cyclist like yourself seems to have a lot of balls to juggle in the air?
There's always something going on. My wife says I'm attracted to chaos. I think I am.
Olympic champ Ellesse Andrews and the St Thomas of Canterbury College First XIII feature.