Aussies dominate Oceania Champs TT

Nov 13th, 09. Australians won all three time trial categories in bitterly cold and windy conditions at the Oceania Championships in Winton near Invercargill today.

The men’s winner was Drew Ginn, who was competing in his first major cycling event after finishing a stellar career in rowing highlighted by three Olympic gold medals and five world championships.

Ginn took out the elite men’s honours clocking 51m08s for the challenging 40kms course, finishing 1m 35s ahead of Bay of Plenty’s Logan Hutchings, the 2008 New Zealand champion.

He was not the fastest rider over the challenging course today with Michael Matthew (Australian Institute of Sport) winning the under-23 honours in a superb 48:21 ahead of Alexandra’s Alex McGregor who clocked 50:31, the second fastest rider overall.

The other Australian of note was the elite women’s winner Alexis Rhodes who took out the exciting contest by just four seconds from New Zealand champion Melissa Holt (Cambridge) with Victorian Bridie O’Donnell a further 12 seconds back in third.

Rhodes, 24, was a member of the Australian road team which was involved in the horrific crash four years ago in Germany that resulted in the death of teammate Amy Gillett.

The former world junior pursuit champion was up at the turn of the 25km race, and held off the experienced Holt in a time of 33:39.

In other results, Andrew van der Heyden (Waimate) won the under-19 title over 25km, clocking 35:20 ahead of Patrick Jones (Otago) while 16-year-old Georgia Williams (Auckland) recorded an impressive 41:53 to take out the under-19 girls’ honours.

The third night of track finals starts at 6.30pm with tonight’s programme featuring the finals of the sprints, women’s time trial, women’s Points race and men’s Madison.

The Oceania Track Championships run through to Saturday with the road titles contested on Sunday.

Related

• All track articles
• Oceania Cycling Championship results
• Dianne Manson photo gallery