Ellesse Andrews has now won four Olympic medals for New Zealand. Photo / Photosport
Ellesse Andrews has now won four Olympic medals for New Zealand. Photo / Photosport
By Kris Shannon in Paris
Ellesse Andrews is still learning how to race the individual sprint.
An instinctive rider whose physical attributes help bring order to the chaos of the keirin, the 24-year-old finds it more testing when the action simplifies and provides more time to think.
Andrews ended her stay in Paris by collecting a sprint gold medal to match the keirin title claimed a few days earlier, becoming the first woman to achieve that Olympic double.
When adding the team sprint silver won to start the competition, only two Kiwis have enjoyed a better single Games – Lisa Carrington (twice) and Ian Ferguson.
Ellesse Andrews celebrates with mum Angela and dad Jon. Photo / Getty Images
The canoe pair are among New Zealand’s most successful Olympians.
Andrews, who won keirin silver in Tokyo, now sits sixth all-time. Still young, still learning, and indisputably the fastest female cyclist in the world, more medals will surely follow.
“Ellesse is only 24 and she’s really keen to do another Olympic cycle, and there’s absolutely no reason why she won’t,” said her coach and father Jon Andrews. “She’ll just keep getting better and better and better.
“Ellesse is learning all the time and is getting to a level of maturity where she can read races, understand what’s going on. She’s just confident and brings it.”
That confidence is almost as conspicuous as her speed.
While progressing through a gauntlet of knockout rounds and a series of head-to-head races, Andrews took down the Olympic champion, two world champions, and world record holder.
The final three rounds were contested in a best-of-three format but the Kiwi never came close to being pushed into a decider.
Nine races, nine victories, few of them in doubt as the finish line flew into view.
Opponents might have thought they had momentum enough banked from the turn, they might have considered the possibility of retaining a last-lap lead. But time and again, Andrews would rise from her seat, hit top speed and sustain it longer than anyone else.
Asked how it felt to be the fastest rider at Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome, Andrews for once was uncertain.
“I feel like maybe that hasn’t quite sunk in yet,” she said. “The other girls are extremely talented, they’re extremely fast, and so to get one over them in the sprint and the keirin is amazing. But I just need a bit of time to let that all sink in.”
It was an understandable reaction. Favourite in the keirin, Andrews was considered only a contender in the sprint. At the last two world championships, she had been swept in the quarter-finals and semifinals by Germany’s Lea Friedrich, whom she would face in the Olympic final.
The Kiwi attributed some success to her improved qualifying time, ranking third to avoid big names in the early rounds, and the rest to years of preparation with her coach.
“Being here on the last day and fighting for that gold medal was a real surprise,” she said. “It comes with experience and it comes with training time as well – we’ve had some amazing gains on the track in training.
“We’ve tried a few different things and he obviously knows me really well, he knows my body really well, so that’s a real bonus in creating a training programme that is going to suit what I need.”
That programme worked and would be repeatable ahead of the next Olympics. With more time to learn from experience, and with what Jon described as a “unique physiology” years away from diminishing, the sprint could become as favoured as the keirin.
“I do enjoy this event, but it is really tough,” Andrews said. “It’s over three days, and then having raced the keirin beforehand, there were a few little restless nights of sleep.
“It is tough to come out and perform mentally and physically. But it’s just about charging on through all of that and any doubt.”
Doubt erased. Double gold secured. History made and more to come.
Kris Shannon has been a sport journalist since 2011 and covers a variety of codes for the Herald.
