Shanks, Sergent into gold medal rides in Melbourne World Cup

New Zealand cyclist Alison Shanks will have a repeat of her world championship final in the ride-off for a gold medal on the opening night of the UCI World Cup in Melbourne later tonight.

Shanks, the world champion, will take on Great Britain’s Wendy Houvenaghel in the final of the women’s 3000m individual pursuit in a repeat of their clash for the rainbow jersey in Poland earlier this year.

She is joined by Feilding’s Jesse Sergent into the final in the men’s 4000m individual pursuit where he will take on Australia’s Rohan Dennis. The Australian topped qualifiers in 4:19.25 with Sergent clocking 4:19.92.

Also through to finals is Invercargill’s Tom Scully in the men’s points race with the heats of the women’s scratch race to come.

Houvenaghel, the silver medallist at the Beijing Olympics where Shanks finished fourth, topped qualifiers on 3:34.156 in a chilly Hisense Arena in Melbourne. Shanks was only 7/10ths of a second behind with the pair four seconds faster than the next qualifier, to set up a repeat showdown of their world championship clash.

“I’m looking forward to it. I was pretty pleased with the performance today. I was really happy with the first 2km as I got into my rhythm but I got held up passing my opponent and that seemed to upset my rhythm a bit,” Shanks said.

“My strength is usually in how I finish off races and the ability to back-up in the evening final.”
Shanks said the cool arena was a real issue.

“It’s about 32C deg outside but they have the air conditioning on full bore and it’s only about 20C deg inside. The track is really dead. If they turned the air con off then we would have a really fast track tonight.”

The 26-year-old says she know she is in for a real battle tonight after Houvenaghel clocked 3:30.800 in qualifying on her way to winning the first World Cup in Manchester last month.

“She is in really good form right now. I will need to be at my best tonight.”

Shanks set a personal best 3:29.807 in beating the Great British rider at the world championships earlier this year.

Sergent, fourth at the world championships, looked strong over the first three kilometres but faded a little in the final kilo.

Earlier Invercargill’s Scully cruised through to the final of the men’s points race, finishing in a share of fourth place in his heat over 15kms. He took out the final sprint to share fourth place with top rating Australian Cameron Meyer.

New Zealand finished fifth in the team sprint with the trio of Eddie Dawkins, Simon Van Velthooven and Adam Stewart going under the New Zealand record time they set at last week’s Oceania Championships in Invercargill. They clocked 45.481s in the event where Australia’s Team Jayco and Germany were fastest qualifiers one second quicker than the kiwis.

The teenage team of world junior champions Sam Webster and Ethan Mitchell with Andrew Williams were 10th in 46.627s.

Update: Christchurch’s Joanne Kiesanowski and Tinwald’s Lauren Ellis negotiated their way through to the final of the women’s scratch race.

Ellis finished 10th in the first qualifying heat over 7.5km while Kiesanowski, New Zealand’s leading road rider over recent year, was eighth in the second qualifying heat.

BikeNZ riders are therefore through to two gold medal rides in the men’s and women’s individual pursuit, and into the finals of the men’s points (Tom Scully) and women’s scratch (Joanne Kiesanowski, Lauren Ellis).

NOTE: Finals will not finish until midnight and cover will not be filed until closer to 1am.