Date: Friday, 21 August 2015
Posted by: Cycling Southland

Emma Cumming rising starSouthland's Emma Cumming has rubber-stamped her status as one of the province's future sporting stars with an outstanding result at the UCI Juniors Track Cycling World Championships in Astana, Kazakhstan on Wednesday morning (NZ time).

Cumming, along with Canterbury's Olivia Podmore won a silver medal in the women's team sprint.

The New Zealand combination were the second fastest in qualifying in the women's team sprint in 34.406s, beaten by European champions Germany who set a new world record of 33.992.

This broke the previous record set by Russia at the world championships in Invercargill in 2012.

While Cumming and Podmore were able to lower their personal best again to 34.219 in the final, they could not quite match the Germans who broke their own world record again, winning in 33.899.

"They have trained well throughout the entire camp so their outstanding performance was not a surprise," New Zealand coach Ross Machejefski said.

"We knew the girls were producing times close to what the Germans did at the European championships."

"We focussed on them being relaxed but hungry at the same time and process focussed."

Cumming was obviously delighted by the result.

"It was great teamwork, great process focus and we went out there to just smash it," Cumming said.

There was further cause for celebration when the women's team pursuit quartet of Bryony Botha, Michaela Drummond, Madeleine Park and Holly White not only qualified at the top of the leaderboard, but broke the world record in the process.

They clocked 4:35.155 to be the only team under the 4:36 barrier and beat the previous world record set by Great Britain at the last world championships.

They were second fastest through the first kilometre and then reeled off three consistent kilos in 1:06 and two of 1:07 to be nearly one second faster than Russia and Australia.

"The women's endurance team did well. To be the top qualifiers by so much is pretty cool," Machejefski said.

"The job is not over and they are looking forward to another good ride tomorrow. It's good to start the first day with confidence."

The New Zealander's take on Japan in the semifinal.

RESULTS

Women Team Sprint qualifying: Germany 33.962, 1 (world record); New Zealand (Emma Cumming, Olivia Podmore) 34.406, 2; Australia 3, Italy 4.

Gold medal ride: Germany 33.899, 1 (world record); New Zealand 34.219, 2.

Bronze: Italy 3, Australia 4.

Women's 4000m team pursuit qualifying: New Zealand (Bryony Botha, Michaela Drummond, Madeleine Park, Holly White) 4:35.155, 1 (World Record); Russia 4:46.046, 2; Australia 4:46.347, 3; Japan 4:47.812, 4.

Photo and article courtesy The Southland Times

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