Mountain biking: World title quinella leap for Kiwi sport

ROTORUA - For five agonising minutes, Oceania junior champion Cameron Cole sat on the ornately carved, aptly named hot-seat and stared back up the mountain.

After posting a slick 3m 28.39s over the 2.2km downhill course at the UCI World Mountain Bike Championships, the waiting game began.

One by one, four of the five riders who had followed Cole on the hair-raising descent came up short. Only teammate and top seed Sam Blenkinsop remained.

He had lost time high up Mt Ngongotaha but charged through the tricky part of the course and threatened to get under Cole's time.

In the end that proved just beyond 17-year-old Blenkinsop, who failed by 1.16s to match Cole who slumped to the ground in tears before raising his arms in triumph.

Like New Zealand's first world champion, track rider Allan Miller who won the kilometre time trial gold at the world junior championships in Wanganui 23 years ago, Cole, who claimed his country's 12th UCI world championship, had to wait before the realisation struck.

At championships dominated by big name European riders, a first quinella for New Zealand at a UCI event was heralded as a breakthrough for the sport.

Cole, single-minded - "I have never really been into team sport" he admitted - said he had gone to the start at the top of the mountain on his own.

"I got my race head on and went for it," Cole, 18, said. Only sixth in Thursday's seeding run after a minor "off", Cole was 1.04s faster than France's Antoine Badouard through the timed intermediate point.

Briton Ralph Jones was next fastest with Blenkinsop, ripping into it after an early crash, next.

"I knew as I waited [in the hot seat] at the bottom it was going to be close," said Cole.

"It was pretty much my kind of course so I was kinda confident." Cole, who mixes his time in the saddle between downhill, 4X and BMX in which he is the national junior champion, dismissed any suggestion he would chase a place in BMX at the Beijing Olympics.

Of more immediate concern for Hamilton teenager is finding a job.

"I'll celebrate tonight, let it sink in tomorrow, take a week off and then hopefully get a job," Cole said after joining New Zealand's growing list of cyclists able to wear the coveted rainbow jersey as a world champion.

He would prefer, naturally, to get a call from one of the professional mountain bike teams but he is not banking on that.

While the junior men and their one-two provided the highlight for the New Zealand team at the 17th world championships, there were other commendable efforts.

Battling a wrist injury which will require further surgery, former world champion Vanessa Quin stormed down the mountain to claim sixth in the elite women's race with Jenny Makgill also in the top 10. The gold was won in spectacular style by Briton Tracey Moseley.

New Zealand did not figure in the elite men's downhill with a super-conservative John Kirkcaldie bidding farewell to the sport with a 21st placing - 16.71s slower than tearaway winner Sam Hill (Australia).

Commonwealth Games silver medallist Rosara Joseph fulfilled top 10 hopes by finishing second in the demanding four-lap cross-country, behind Canadian Alison Sydor.

And, in the last of the 16 titles to be decided at the highly-successful championships, New Zealand's Kashi Leuchs, after hovering around 11th-13th place for much of the seven-lap race, faded slightly for 16th.

A storming last lap carried favourite Julien Absalon (France) to victory over Swiss hope Christoph Sauser.