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Chloe Moran has been in fine form across sprint and endurance events during the Track Nationals, and took her second gold medal with the scratch race win in the sprint to the line, comfortably winning a quite defensive race ahead of Nicola Macdonald taking silver and Alex Martin-Wallace with bronze in third.
It completed an impressive track national championships campaign for Moran, taking gold as an individual in the points race as well, ‘winning’ as the only elite women’s team to field an individual pursuit squad, and also taking a bronze when she flexed over to the sprint side of the track in the team sprint for South Australia.
“I’m super stoked to have won the scratch race,” said Moran. “I always love coming to track nationals, the SA team always has a really good vibe and to pull off some great results alongside some really good juniors and people coming through the ranks is great to see.”
Moran is a part of the women’s team pursuit squad and also has experience in the bunch races, making her a definite candidate for selection at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
“This year is really important for Olympic qualification,” said Moran. “I’ll head into Oceanias next week and hopefully the Milton World Cup. Hopefully, this a good run-in and we’ll see how it goes for the year.”
The pick of the events from an entertainment perspective was the dramatic elite men’s scratch race, which saw John Carter take the victory after an attack with Declan Tresize that saw them take a lap on the field and fight it out for the win in the final sprint.
The officials even got confused by the volatile nature of race, ringing the bell for the final lap either early or late, but it made little difference, with Carter winning in either occasion as he accelerated away from Tresize.
Rohan Haydon-Smith hung on for third after being a part initially of the Carter/Tresize move, just not able to hang on in the final few laps.
“Yeah, I wasn’t really the favourite going in, but I just knew I had to be opportunistic and follow the moves. It looked like they were going to stick and that’s what happened in the end,” said Carter.
It was all groups of one and two at the end, me and Declan got ‘two to go’ twice and it was really confusing at the end. I wasn’t even sure I one until the results board came up.”
In the men’s Team Sprint, the South Australian team of Leigh Hoffmann, Maxwell Liebeknecht and anchoring rider James Brister took out the men’s Team Sprint in a new championships record, just beating out the Queensland team of Nathan Graves, Ryan Elliot and Byron Davies by 16 thousandths of a second as both teams went faster than the previous record, also held by SA.
“We we’re coming in for the win. We’ve got the fastest starter in the world (Hoffmann), the world champion. We we’re always aiming for the win but who knows what happened on the day,” said Liebeknecht.
“It was our first time as a team today, we were making the transition from first to second wheel and ironed out some mistakes in that second ride. I think we’re all pretty happy with how we rode,” said Hoffmann.
The elite women’s Keirin was taken out by 19-year-old sensation Alessia McCaig, making the move to follow Breanna Hargrave when she launched with just under two laps to go, then powering around the outside to take the victory ahead of a fast-finishing Selina Ho, with Hargrave in third.
In other events, Keira Will won the Under-19s womens Points Race in a tough battle with Felicity Wilson-Haffenden. The pair were at the forefront of battling it out for sprints, but it was Will who proved to be the fastest over the long run, comfortably in the lead coming into the finish then winning the final sprint with Belinda Bailey taking second in the sprint for third overall.
The Under-19 men’s Points Race was taken out with a consummate performance by Will Holmes ahead of Oscar Gallagher and Jack Clark.
Watch all the night session action from the 2023 Auscycling Track Cycling National Championships on
