Saturday at the Oceania Track Cycling Championships promise plenty with 14 Southlanders in action throughout the final day of competition.
Day four starts at 2:30pm NZ time with Women's Sprint qualifying. Double medalist Steph McKenzie will line up for Southland while Natasha Hansen will ride in New Zealand colours. Hansen, the NZ record and title-holder won the silver medal in at the 2012 Oceania Champs a year ago and after her disappointment in the keirin will be looking to finish the championships strongly. McKenzie has also impressed and will be hoping to convert her fourth at last year's Oceanias into a medal position this year.
Jeremy Presbury will carry confidence earned at the Junior World Track Championships into the Under 19 Men's Keirin competition. Presbury finished fourth at Worlds and showed good top line speed in sprint qualifying yesterday which will aid his cause today.
The Men's keirin will be chock full of Southlanders. Eddie Dawkins and matt Archibald will be joined by Kilo bronze-medalist Matt Dodds, Karl Watson and Lee Evans in what should be an exciting competition.
The U19 Women's and both Elite omniums will also conclude tonight. Currently Southland's Pieter Bulling holds second place, 4 points down on the half-way leader, South Australia's Luke Davison. Cam Karwowski is third with 16 points and has two of Australia's most promising talents, Alex Morgan and Tirian McManus just two points adrfit in a tie for fourth. This afternoon's qualifying session features the 4000m Individual Pursuit with the 15km Scratch race and Kilo finishing off preceedings tonight.
In the Women's Omnium, Southland's Sequoia Cooper is in a three-way battle for bronze at the halfway point. With runaway leaders Annette Edmondson and Isabella King finishing one-two in each of yesterday's three events, Cooper, Gemma Dudley and Georgia Baker, who Southlanders saw take home two golds from the UCI Juniors Track World Championships in August, are battling for the third step on the podium. Heading into today's final three rounds Dudley and Cooper are tied in third on 12 points, with Baker just a point further back.
Southland's Laura Heywood has some ground to make up in the U19 omnium after bad luck effected her placings in yesterday's points and elimination races. Heywood currently sits 10th overall with three events to ride.
Aimee Burns will also look to follow up her agressive display in the scratch race earlier in the championships in the Elite Women's Points race later tonight.
The championships conclude with the Men's Madison over 40km. Southlanders will recall the incredible victory by Hayden McCormick and Dylan Kennett as U19 riders at the Track Nationals earlier this year. McCormick's crash at the end of his Points race victory last night will mean that Kennett will have a new partner. At the time of writing pairings were not available.
We will update results as they come to hand. You can also follow Cycling Southland on Facebook or Twitter for further updates throughout the day.