Former New Zealand track cycling coach Ron Cheatley reckons the five-medal haul at the Paris Olympics shows the recent evolution of the sport in Aotearoa.
The success comes almost three years after the suspected suicide of athlete Olivia Podmore – which sparked an inquiry and significant change at Cycling New Zealand.
Cheatley told NZME that acknowledging change was necessary has contributed to the success in the velodrome.
“It’s in good shape at the moment.
“[Winning] was great for the sport – particularly for the athletes themselves to actually put the word out there [so] the public understand that the sport is in good heart.
“What’s evolved over the last few years has made the sport even stronger. The athletes have always been in a pretty good space within the team in recent times and there might have been a bit of tidying up, needed around the perimeters, but that certainly has happened.
“The sport is certainly in a good space going forward... We’ve got world-class athletes in it.”
Ellesse Andrews led the team to help the sport become New Zealand’s most decorated at Paris – collecting three medals in her three events.
The 24-year-old seamlessly claimed gold in her specialist event, the Keirin, however, Cheatley explained a win there wasn’t always guaranteed.
“We would have thought that she would have certainly been a middle prospect, particularly in the Keirin event, which was her number one targeted event. It’s an event that anything can happen... it’s a bit of a rough-and-tumble event and if you’re not in the right position at the right time with two to go, or you’ve got the person on the outside who is giving you a bit of a hard time – it can be a difficult event to actually place in.
“But Ellesse had so much power and so much strength that she was able to get through those rounds quite comfortably and then went on to win gold.”
Andrews went on to win gold in the individual sprint and silver in the team sprint – which Cheatley said is another example of how she just got “better and better” throughout the event.
Before that, only individual pursuiter Sarah Ulmer at Athens in 2004 had won a gold for the country at the velodrome.
Cheatley explained how Andrews has always naturally had a knack for sprint cycling following a conversation he had with talent’s coach, and her father, Jon Andrews. Jon formerly trained under Cheatley at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
“When Andrews first started out her father was thinking that she would be an endurance rider, a pursuit rider on the track and he was training, training her for that. It didn’t take long to realise that she was going to develop into a sprinter and that’s what’s happened.”
The former mentor is confident Andrews is still to reach her high ceiling and will succeed again at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
“She could go through to her mid-30s if she wanted to.
“It’s pretty unusual, normally she would probably want to finish when she was late 20s/early 30s, but she’ll certainly be at the top of her game from now, right through to the next Olympics if she wants to be.
“No doubt about that.”
“With sprinters, they normally will compete in the three different disciplines, which is the team sprint, whether it be male or female, the individual sprint and then the Keirin event. The preparation is very similar for all three.
Completing the handful of medals, Ally Wollaston won bronze, and New Zealand’s women’s team pursuit won another silver.
To guarantee more team success going forward, Cheatley said Cycling New Zealand needs to standardise their coaching platform.
“They have had some up and down times with coaches, appointing a coach and they don’t last too long. If we can keep the stability there that’s there at the moment.
“There’s a couple of the [current] coaches that were only appointed a year ago, so they haven’t had a lot of time to work with the athletes but [are] certainly doing a good job.
“We’ve got a good coaching structure both with the men and the women and both sprint and endurance events [and] we need to sort of nail that down towards the next Olympics and get a firm structure going forward.
“And in four years’ time... we can only be stronger.”
Bonnie Jansen is a multimedia journalist in the NZME sports team. She’s a football commentator and co-host of the Football Fever podcast and was part of the Te Rito cadetship scheme before becoming a full-time journalist.