Australia to search sports for medal contenders

Australian cycling officials will begin hunting for "big engine" women to underpin the nation's Beijing Olympic games team for 2008. Women's cycling coach Warren McDonald announced the plan at the UCI World Road Championships in Austria, declaring that Australia doesn't have a medal contender after seeing the leap forward rival nations have taken at the championships.

"We'll do some studies and research," explained McDonald of their hunt for an existing athlete to cross into cycling. "There are a number of sports that have shown they have been successful…triathlon and rowing are a couple of big engine sports." The comments come after Australia's Oenone Wood and Victoria Kathy Watt finished 27th and 28th respectively, some three minutes behind Kristin Armstrong - winner of the women's World Championships time trial event.

"We've been just outside the top ten the last couple of years but the level has gone extremely high and at the moment I don't think we have a medalist time triallist," concluded McDonald. "We need to find a girl with a very big engine that can ride fast for 30 minutes."