Southland Champs finish in style

Another stack of strong performances were the feature of the final day of Southland Track Cycling Championships held at Stadium Southland Velodrome today.

One of the stars of the three day’s Olivia Podmore from Christchurch opened the day’s programme with another win, this time in the first of the Standing laps for Under 17 Girls. Her 21.294 gave her the overall win over the Southland champ Makayla Smith (22.479), Laura Moffatt (23.035) and Alex Bodle (23.535).

Hamish Beadle took the Under 17 title in 20.256 ahead of Hayden Strong and Tom Sexton, while Erin Criglington (21.605) kept her unbeaten run going with a win in the Masters Women Standing Lap over Jacq Dearlove and Cherie Champion. Mike White became the first to dip under 20 seconds in winning the Masters Men event ahead of Brett Roulston and Scott Milne and Katie Schofield showed why she leads out the New Zealand Women’s Team Sprint with 19.664 in the Elite Women’s competition.

Matt Archibald powered his way to the morning’s fastest lap in 18.392 to take out the Elite Men’s competition from Tom Beadle while Jeremy Presbury was the fastest Under 19 over the lap, his 19.485 just 0.03 seconds ahead of Josh Haggerty.

Individual Pursuit qualifying saw Laura Heywood take top spot into her gold medal ride with Sophie McMurdo. She delivered in the final taking another couple of seconds off to set 2:33.571 for the 2000 metre distance. Georgia Vessey claimed bronze, beating home Jennifer Muhl by a little over 1.5 seconds.

The Under 17 Girls saw Emma Cumming finish strongly to defeat Makayla Smith in the ride for gold with her 2:54.676 nearly four seconds faster than her qualifying time. Sheree Horne got in the medals with a 3:00.406 to take bronze over Aly Doherty.

Hayden Strong lived up to his name with the top qualifying ride and then a controlled final to take out the Under 17 Boys over Tom Sexton by a second and a half. Josh Carpenter also held off Hamish Beadle to take third spot.

Sam Kopae finished strongly over her final kilometer to take the Masters 2 Women’s pursuit gold ahead of Marie Muhl while Erin Criglington was never troubled in her Masters 1 ride to claim victory by over 12 seconds with Nicola Stevens and Sonya Barton taking silver and bronze. Peter Grandiek took out the Masters 3 Men for the second consecutive year in 3:34.920 while Jerard Stock and Simon Lusk qualified for their gold medal ride in Masters 2 with Stock taking the win by 1.6 seconds. Neil Familton claimed a deserved bronze.

Mike White added the IP title to his tally with 3:43.125 for the 3000 metres with Andrew Lienert taking silver and Derek Tan bronze.

Laura Fairweather and Aimee Burns battled it out for the Elite Women’s gold with Fairweather getting the win by 8 seconds with her 3:49.760. 

Josh Haggerty continued his scintillating form by dominating the Under 19s to earn a 7.3 second victory adding the Individual Pursuit title to his weekend haul which also included the U19 scratch race and sprint gold medals, silver in the kilo and a hugely impressive overall victory in the Open Men’s Points race while matt Zenovich completed his 4000 metre Elite IP in 4:55.961.

The Under 15s provided plenty of action in their derby finals. Pegasus’ Kate Ward claimed the girl’s final ahead of Southland champ Madeleine Gough and Brooke Hargest while Kain Bowles showed his clean set of heels to the line in winning the boys race in impressive fashion over Corbin Strong and Samuel Miller.

Our Under 13s also put on a show for those in the stands with Emily Paterson taking gold in the 250m Time Trial over Lucy Dawkes, Tailah Boniface and Katie Forde while Hunter Gough snuck in front of Josh Miller in the boys. Miller backed up well to win the Scratch race over Gough and Dawkes with Dawkes claiming the Derby gold ahead of Paterson and Gough.

The championships finished with keirin finals including the very first Masters Women’s keirin. This new addition to the national programme featured at Southland Champs for the first time and provided some great racing with Erin Criglington sticking to the script to take gold from Jacquie Dearlove and Nicola Stevens. Mike White lead from start to finish in the Masters Men race to take his second gold of the day ahead of Ant Leathart and Scott Milne while Katie Schofield was untroubled in claiming the Elite and Under 19 women’s final ahead of Kirstie James and Jen Muhl. The Men’s elite race was taken out by Matt Archibald from Tom Beadle and Karl Watson. 

The Cycling Southland selectors will this week name their squads for the upcoming track nationals which will be held in Invercargill from January 31 to February 3 (Elite and Under 19) and February 26 to March 2 (Age Groups).

The next track event on the calendar is the annual ILT New Year Carnival which will be held on January 18 and 19.

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