Ginn rows away with Oceania title

Two high profile Australians with different motivations dominated the time trials on the third day of the Oceania Cycling Championships. Small fields braved bitterly callous winds for the road time trials at Winton, near Invercargill this morning.

They were dominated by Australians who took out the honours for men’s elite and under-23 as well as elite women.

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 51:08 minutes for the challenging 40 kilometre course, finishing 1:35 minutes ahead of Bay of Plenty’s Logan Hutchings, the 2008 New Zealand champion.

The Victorian is part of a company that owns and operates two bike shops in Melbourne as well as his own consultancy, and has turned his attentions to cycling. 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 minutes ahead of Alexandra’s Alex McGregor who clocked 50:31 minutes, 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 that was involved in the horrific crash four years ago in Germany that resulted in the death of team-mate 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 minutes.

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

Results