UPDATE: Rotorua's Lachlan Stevens-McNabb is a BMX world champion for the second year in a row.
The 7-year-old is the toast of the New Zealand BMX team after snaring a second successive title at the UCI BMX World Championships at Copenhagen yesterday.
The Rotorua rider, who won the 6 years age group
world title in South Africa last year, led from go-to-whoa to claim the 2011 world crown in the Challenge age group racing.
Twenty-one New Zealand riders raced yesterday in various age groups with 17 making it through the three-race qualifying phase. Lachlan led the way for the juniors in a team that grabbed five podium placings from nine finals.
Lachlan has continued the success of Kiwi riders in the younger grades, following on from North Harbour's Rico Bearman who won the 6 years age group world title in 2009 and the 7 years world title last year.
Lachlan won all three qualifying motos, his quarter-final, semifinal and final but said it was tough. "It was harder than last year. There [were] a lot more riders and all of them had trained really hard and got a lot better. I'm really happy to win though," Lachlan said.
The other medals for the New Zealanders were a silver to Rangiora's Tahlia Hansen (14 years girls) and bronze medals to Rotorua's Ngahina Pene (8 years girls), Rico Bearman (8 years boys) and Hamilton's Kaly Harcourt (10 years girls).
It was Ngahina's first time at the world championships and she just made the final but gave a good performance to take third.
Several Rotorua riders were in yesterday's competition. In the boys' division Lachlan's younger brother, 5-year-old Wyatt, racing in his first world championships, was fifth in the final of the 5-6 years boys division.
Zach Paterson was sixth in the 9 years, while Tuhoto-Ariki Pene was seventh in the semifinals of the 10 years division. In the girls' division Caitlin Flavell was fifth in the 5-6 year division.
Today it's the turn of the older age groups, ahead of the elites' final practice session and qualifying time trial.
