Cycling: Men's pursuit team picks up medal

New Zealand men's team pursuit picked up the first medal of the UCI track cycling champs when they came from a long way back to beat Russia in a ride-off for bronze tonight. Close to 1.5s down at the halfway stage of the 4km event, the team of Aaron Gate, Sam Bewley, Westley Gough and Marc Ryan flew home to win convincingly in 3m 57.592s, nearly 2s quicker than their qualifying time. It is the third world championship medal won in the event and the 23rd overall. New Zealand qualified third in the afternoon session, their time of 3m 59.156s more than 4s slower than Great Britain and Australia. They remained just behind the pace of the gold and silver medallists until the last kilometre. Ryan dropped out with more than three laps remaining and their 1m 00.371 split was just sixth fastest in the 15-team field. It is a gulf in class that would appear impossible to bridge in the four months before London, even with the inclusion of Jesse Sergent, New Zealand's best pursuiter who stayed in Europe to ride with his RadioShack-Nissan-Trek team rather than attend these championships. Gate, another key rider, is still working his way back to peak form after picking up an illness at a recent training camp, so there is room for improvement, but the Brits and Australians look like they're making the rest fight for bronze. Earlier a wheelspin on the line proved the difference between young sprinters Natasha Hansen and Katie Schofield going to London in July or setting their sights on Rio de Janeiro four years later. Schofield's slip off the start line saw them qualify ninth fastest in the 16-team field. "It's one of those things that happens,'' said coach Stuart MacDonald. He estimated the mistake cost half a second. "She regularly rides 19.2 or 19.3 off the line and that was 19.8,'' he said. Hansen and Schofield were riding to try to secure a berth at London. There was some confusion as to whether they had to beat the Venezuelans by four or five places to win that spot. In the end it was academic. Their qualifying ride of 34.278s was nearly half a second below their personal best 33.881s and a mere .057s quicker and one place higher than the Venezuela pairing of Mariesthela Vilera and Daniela Larreal Chirinos. "They're a team of the future, "MacDonald said. "The momentum they have built over the past six months has been incredible.''