While next year’s Olympics uppermost in their plans, BikeNZ is already looking further ahead with the formation of their own under-23 team to compete on the road in Europe this year.
BikeNZ have announced that their leading young endurance track riders will compete under the New Zealand jersey in an extensive road campaign based in Belgium for six months starting from this weekend.
 BikeNZ U23 Team(Photo: Gerry McManus / BikeNZ; click to enlarge) |
The six-strong squad is headed by recent world track championship silver medallist Shane Archbold (Timaru), his track teammate Aaron Gate (Auckland), Commonwealth games rep Myron Simpson (Auckland), 2009 world junior gold medallist Cameron Karwowski (Blenheim), Jason Christie (Ashburton) and Will Bowman (Christchurch).
The programme has been supported by Trek International along with BikeNZ.
"It's an exciting venture for us as we look to develop our best young riders going forward," said BikeNZ High Performance Director, Mark Elliott.
"Several of our most promising young road and track riders already have contracts with professional teams in their under-23 development programmes.
"The clear evidence is that our endurance track riders benefit enormously from an international road campaign. For most of them it means heading to Europe where there is just so much competition in professional and semi-pro races and major under-23 tours just about every day of the week.
"We want to be more structured with this and therefore we have developed this venture which we hope will become an important part of our long term rider development."
Elliott said while some of this group will push for inclusion in the team for London 2012, all will be candidates going forward towards the 2016 Olympics.
"We would not be able to do this without the support from Trek. While this will ultimately benefit our international track programme, it will also help these young riders be noticed by professional teams in Europe.
"Trek are helping with a link to their Trek Livestrong development team from which both Jesse Sergent and Sam Bewley have graduated and we have three other young riders in that programme this year.
"The riders will learn and develop so much both on and off the bike. It's a fantastic opportunity for them and we expect them to grasp it with both hands."
The team face an exhaustive programme including six major stage races headlined by the seven-day
Thuringen-Rundfahrt under-23 tour in Germany, the eight-day An Post Ras in Ireland and the nations cup Tour de L'Avenir, an eight-day stage race in France. There is also a plethora of local club racing in Belgium and major one day races headed by the Nations Cup series for under-23 riders this weekend with the Tour of Flanders, the 1.2 level Rund um Finanz Platz Eschborn in Germany and Memorial Phillipe Van Coningsloo in Belgium.
The team will also take part in a three-week camp at altitude at the UCI's training base at Aigle in Switzerland.
The squad will be under coach Stu Macdonald and managed by BikeNZ's Stephen Connell, who developed the concept into a commercial reality. They will receive support from BikeNZ's head sports scientist Craig Palmer and nutritionist Dan Healey.
