Big contingent chase success at BMX World Championships

The BikeNZ team arrive in Copenhagen tonight with their biggest contingent of elite BMX riders for this week’s UCI World Championships.

An 11-strong high performance squad have been training for the last 10 days at the UCI headquarters in Aigle, Switzerland, at the base of the Swiss Alps.

Coach Ken Cools said the squad are in good shape for the championships where they will join another 33 BMX New Zealand riders who will compete in the age group Challenge classes.

“The weather has not been the greatest while we have been in Switzerland but we have been managing around it to get in our training sessions,” Cools said. “We had a great riding session two days ago in the evening when the sun came out.”

Cools said the championships will prove a real benchmarking process for the squad that includes five elites and six juniors, led by 2009 world champion Sarah Walker and current world number one ranked Marc Willers.

“From the days of just Marc and Sarah, we have really come a long way now having so many of us here. It really is exciting,” Cools said.

“Ryan (Hollows, assistant coach) and I had big dreams and plans to see how far we could take this programme and now three years down the track we are here with 11 riders and four support staff.

“Marc is firing on all cylinders. Sarah is doing well. She has got over a couple of minor injuries that she had from a training session gone wrong a few weeks back and she will be 100 per cent next week.

“We know where Marc and Sarah stack up from the Supercross results. We are looking forward to seeing if Kurt Picard can continue his progress. We are excited to see how the likes of juniors Trent Woodcock, Daniel Franks and Nic Fox perform now they will race in their own class after competing in the open class on the world cup circuit.”

With the London Olympics 12 months away, the New Zealanders are aware that the racing will be fierce across the board this week.

“Any world championship is important but a European-based world championship gets the cream of the crop. There is going to be some seriously major depth in the ranks. It is going to show us where we stack up.”

There is practice for Challenge classes over the next two days ahead of the official opening ceremony on Tuesday night.

Racing begins for the 14 years and under age group on Wednesday, with 15 and over on Thursday morning ahead of the first elite practice in the afternoon.

The official elite time trials are on Friday afternoon to determine qualifying, with the world championship for elites and juniors on Saturday and the World Cruiser titles for age groups on Sunday.

There are eight New Zealand age group podium placegetters from last year’s world championships competing including three who will carry the world number one plate. They comprise Rotorua’s Lachlan Stevens-McNabb (7 years), Tahlia Hansen (Rangiora, 14 years) and North Harbour’s Rico Bearman (8 years) who is going for his third straight world title.

The team is:
Elite team, male: Kurt Pickard (Tauranga), Kurt James (Cambridge), Marc Willers (Cambridge); Junior: Jayden Davy (New Plymouth), Daniel Franks (North Avon), Bradley Gates (Waitakere), Trent Jones (Kaiapoi), Trent Woodcock-Takurua (Sunset Coast).
Female, elite: Sarah Walker (Rotorua), Victoria Hill (New Plymouth); Junior: Holly Woodcock-Takurua (Sunset Coast).
Challenge Classes, Male, 5-6: Lucas Bhimy (North Harbour), Wyatt Stevens-McNabb (Rotorua); 7 years: Lachlan Stevens-McNabb (Rotorua), James Whyte (Mountain Ramblers); 8 years: Rico Bearman (North Harbour), Boston Caldwell (North Harbour); 9 years: Zach Paterson (Rotorua); 10 years: Tuhoto-Ariki Pene (Rotorua); 11 years: Logan Caesar (Cambridge); 12 years: Zachery Kershaw (Papakura); Jayden Fleming (Papakura); 13 years: Carlos Kershaw (Papakura), Ihakara Pene (Rotorua); 15 years: Donald Ross (Whangarei), Ryan Berney (North Harbour); 16 years: Cody Hobbs (Te Awamutu), Ryan Lewis (Te Awamutu).
Female, 5-7 years: Caitlin Flavell (Rotorua); 8 years: Ngahina Pene (Rotorua); 10 years: Kaly Harcourt (Hamilton), Baylee Luttrell (Hamilton), Mikayla Bearman (North harbour); 13 years: Zoe Fleming (Papakura); Tahlia Hansen (Rangiora), Abigail Fox (Gisborne); Monique Smith (Gisborne), Kayla Pene (Rotorua).
Cruiser class only: 12 and under: Tim O’Sullivan (Papakura); 40-44 years: David Caesar (Cambridge), Patrick O’Sullivan (Papakura), Paul Luttrell (Hamilton); 45 plus: Alf Amor (Rotorua). Female: 13-14 years: Abigail Fox (Gisborne)