New Zealand dominates team qualifiers in Jakarta

Four German national team miss entering the first round

By Peter Maurer

02/23/2023 | (rsn) – Team Pursuit Qualifiers scheduled for the first day of the First Nations Cup in Jakarta, Indonesia went to New Zealand for the women’s and men’s sprints. The two German teams, each in tenth place, missed out on entering the first round.

The Three Nations Championships, the successors to the World Cup, are scheduled for the spring and are part of the Olympic qualification for the Paris track competitions. After the European Championships, the best teams from Europe met their opponents from around the world for the first time, and surprisingly, Michaela Drummond, Allie Wollaston, Briony Botha and Emily Sherman won qualification in the women’s team pursuit.

The New Zealanders, who finished sixth internationally at the Track World Championships in Berlin in 2020, qualified confidently with a time of 4:10,950 ahead of the European champions from Great Britain, who traveled to Jakarta without Katie Archibald and Niah Evans. The third place went to the French, who just a few weeks ago lost the mini-final to Germany at the European Championships in Grenchen.

The German women, unlike the Swiss, were traveling with an entirely new quartet – Lena-Charlotte Rissner, Justina Kasabella, Hana Dobjans and Lana Eberle – who didn’t make it into the top eight qualifying rounds in 10th place. for the four places in the final.

Four men lose two seconds in the top eight

The men’s qualifier was also won by the New Zealanders, who took silver behind Denmark at last year’s World Championships. The current world champion finished second behind Campbell Stewart, Aaron Jett, George Jackson and Nicholas Kirgozzo. The Danish quartet was only half a second slower – and that, despite Rasmus Pedersen being there only one man from the world champion team.

Australia finished third in the qualifiers, ahead of Great Britain. Japan, Belgium, France and Canada completed the first round field. Among others, the European champion from Italy in ninth and the German men’s four, which Roger Kluge, Theo Reinhardt, Tobias Back-Gramko and Nicholas Heinrich in Jakarta did not qualify for. The foursome was almost two seconds short of making it to the first round.