Steele von Hoff wins Commonwealth Games road race

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Australia finished off the cycling events at their home Commonwealth Games on Saturday by winning the men's road race; the country's 14th gold medal in cycling out of a total of 22 awarded across Track, Mountain Bike and Road. Steele von Hoff took the win in a sprint finish, ahead of Jonathan Mould of Wales and Clint Hendricks of South Africa.

The men rode nine laps of the 18.7 kilometre circuit around Currumbin Beach, south of Gold Coast. The course featured two climbs per lap and a winding route through suburban neighbourhoods.

Luke Rowe of Wales, who came to the Games straight from Paris-Roubaix, was the first to attack on the opening lap, but was quickly brought back. A subsequent attack by Thomas Stewart (England) with James McLaughlin (Guernsey) and Joseph Areruya (Rwanda) did get away, followed by a chase group of six.

The leaders managed to stretch their lead to nearly four minutes by lap 6, with the chasers slowly closing in on them. However, the Australian and New Zealand teams decided this was enough, and began reeling them in, eventually catching the final two riders - Stewart and McLaughlin - on the last lap.

Jack Bauer (New Zealand) tried an attack, but was quickly brought back, setting the stage for a sprint finish. Shane Archbold (New Zealand) started the sprint from a long way out into a head wind, with von Hoff on the wheel of team mate Cameron Meyer, the time trial winner earlier in the Games. Von Hoff came by on the left, taking the lead in the final 100 metres to win by a bike length.

Remarkably, von Hoff broke six vertebrae in a racing crash in Melbourne in February, but refused to give up his dream for the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games.

"Six days after the crash I started training again on a recumbent," he said. "I just wanted to get my legs spinning. And then I thought, 'I have seven weeks until the Games so I'd better start training.'

"I don’t think I've absorbed it yet, but I will later on tonight. It wasn't looking good [in the last lap], it was me and Cam and the entire New Zealand team. I thought we couldn't do it but we just had to hang in tough, and it just so happened to be that we pulled it off."

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