KEY POINTS:
Apart from the honour of wearing the national champion's jersey for a year on the international stage, other factors will raise the stakes at today's elite national road races in Upper Hutt.
On display will be the New Zealand men's team debuting in next week's Tour Down Under.
Tim Gudsell, Heath Blackgrove, Peter Latham, Logan Hutchings, Clinton Avery, Matthew Haydock, Gordon McCauley and Scott Lyttle will want to prove their fitness for the six-day South Australian stage race in front of national road coach and team manager Jacques Landry.
Besides them, professional racer Julian Dean will be competing in his first road nationals, as will Thursday's time trial winner, Glen Chadwick, who, at 30, has decided to make a charge to represent New Zealand after years competing professionally on an Australian licence.
With defending champion Hayden Roulston sidelined by injuries afterhe crashed during training thisweek, Counties-Manukau hardman McCauley, still smarting from finishing second to Chadwick in the time trial, will also be a contender.
The hilly course is expected to be punishing and the race is likely to be run in less than ideal weather as rain is forecast for Wellington.
The men will race 156km, riding the Blue Mountains three times and Wallaceville Hill five times.
The women will loop the Blue Mountains twice and Wallaceville Hill 3 1/2 times, a distance of 101km.
Blackgrove, a serious contender after winning the recent Vineyards Tour in Nelson, says the peloton cannot let Chadwick out of their sights.
"He's a very strong rider, one that can't be underestimated or be allowed to get away because you won't see him again," said Blackgrove, who will now captain the Tour Down Under team in place of Roulston.
Credit Agricole rider Dean is the unknown factor, despite his reputation: he has raced the Tour de France twice in the past three years and has the tag of being one of the best lead-out riders in the world.
"No one really knows - he hasn't done any [domestic] racing for anyone to know how well he'll be going," Blackgrove said.
"But I'm pretty sure he wouldn't ride if he didn't think he'd have a chance and he's our top road rider by a long way."
Landry will be looking closely at the elite under-23 races for men and women.
There are six to eight places available for the women at his European training centre in Limoux, southern France, and a further four for the under-23 men.
He said he would be looking for "aggressive, smart" racers who were not pack riders.
Christchurch professional rider Joanne Kiesanowski, a member of the 2006 World Cup series-winning Swiss Univega Pro team, will start as favourite for the women's title.
However, as Te Awamutu's Melissa Holt pointed out, there were quite a number of riders with "race legs" who had been doing a lot of racing in the past couple of months.
- NZPA