Hannah van Kampen crosses the line to upstage the elite women at the road-race nationals.Photo/Ryan Cox
If it appears deceptive to you on the BikeNZ website then don't be too hard on yourself.
That's because it is misleading to see Hannah van Kampen as the under-23 women's road race champion, a rung below the elite women at the Grassroots Trust BikeNZ Club National Championship in Cambridge at the weekend.
For all sense and purpose Van Kampen, of Hawke's Bay, is the best under-23 rider but that camouflages the fact that she is also the best female elite road-race rider in the country after she pipped Olympian Jaime Nielsen, of Te Awamutu, across the finish line on Friday by six seconds.
The Ramblers Cycling Club member, who turns 21 on Thursday, clocked 3hr 20min 42sec to steal the thunder from Neilsen, Genelle Willers, also of Te Awamutu, and Ramblers member Kerri-anne Page, who finished at the same time.
"I was very surprised. It's amazing. I can't believe it so I'm still buzzing," the Hastings rider said yesterday after celebrating with a dinner with her parents, Vanessa and Paul, and a spa session in Hamilton after the 100km, five-lap ride.
Van Kampen, who was the time-trial runner-up to Nielsen on Thursday, revealed the "Ramblers girls" of Page, Jo Holdaway, Natalie Kirwan, Kirsty McCullum and herself had adopted a pack mentality before the race.
"Jo had the first lap so the rest of us sat back and didn't chase her down. When I went no one chased me down so they let me get away and it stuck ... but it was six seconds so it was pretty tight," she said, after breaking from the fabulous five at the 20km mark to open a 1min 20sec gap.
That was whittled down to a 30-second advantage with a kilometre to go, with Nielsen and Lauren Ellis nipping at her heels.
Not a sprint specialist, Van Kampen thanked her stars as Nielsen had to settle for outsprinting fellow Te Awamutu club rider Racquel Sheath in the charging bunch.
It didn't bother the Eastern Institute of Technology second-year sport science scholarship student that the BikeNZ grouping process restricted her to the under-23 grade.
She said the five Ramblers worked on the foundation of trust and it wouldn't have mattered much if two of them had broken away at the same time.
"We would have worked together and then sprinted at the end," said the former Taiukura Rudolf Steiner Hastings pupil, adding that Holdaway was probably the best sprinter among them.
The Ramblers co-operative will persevere with that plan in the Taranaki Tour during Queen's Birthday weekend early next month.
"I'll have a break in winter and then pick it up again when the new season starts [in September]."
Van Kampen has only raced competitively for five years, after catching the bug as a youngster when she followed her father to Ramblers races a couple of times.
A coaching scholarship, thanks to Hastings couple Elaine and Peter Gavon, from the age of 16 with Bay mentor Ivar Hopman saw her rise to national development under-19 experience in Canberra in just her second year.
"It was a big step up and so I'm doing well this season," the Hastings Hub Cycle Centre-sponsored rider said, after winning the K1 (100km) event in the Coromandel in September last year.
On Friday Hopman had "aged by 10 years".
"He's brilliant. He said to me if you want to light a match then light a fire," she said. Hopman had been screaming at her about a kilometre from the finish.
Van Kampen had put a lot more time and effort on her time-trial training, which ironically rubbed off on the five-lap road race.
After completing her tertiary education, she harbours hopes of securing a berth in a European professional team.
Ramblers rider Marg Porter won the 45-49 years grade on Friday and Andrew Townsend, also of Ramblers, finished third in the Masters 4 grade on Saturday.
Yesterday Palmerston North-based CHB rider Luke Mudgway took out the under-19 men's honours in a sprint finish from time-trial winner Regan Gough (Waipukurau) and Harry Elworthy (Counties Manukau) while Christchurch's Holly Edmondston prevailed in the sprint finish to win the under-19 girls from the Cycling CHB pair of Phoebe Treseder and Amanda Jamieson.
Alex McGregor, 23, of Dunedin, is the elite men's champion.