New Zealand’s performance director Mark Elliott said his team would be targeting keirin glory after cruelly missing out on retaining their team sprint world title.
Edward Dawkins, Ethan Mitchell and Sam Webster finished the men’s team sprint final in a time of 42.808sec, leaving them more than three tenths of a second clear of France (43.136).
But they were disqualified from the final for an early changeover, handing the gold medal to Gregory Bauge, Kevin Sireau and Michael d’Almeida.
“We know we’re the fastest team in the world, it’s just unfortunately the guys don’t get to wear a set of rainbow jerseys again for the year,” said Elliott, who insisted the team would now refocus on other disciplines.
“They’ve got to get back on the horse tomorrow (Thursday) and make sure they’re world champions in the keirin it’s as simple as that.”
Elliott admitted he was frustrated at missing out on the gold medal for a technical mistake after his team had won so convincingly.
“The rules are the rules, you can’t and don’t complain about them, you just get on with it.
“The guys know the rules and they have to execute them, and they didn’t by one or two inches today.
“So it’s the reality of the sport. We’ve been on the other side of it as well, so you have to take the good with the bad but it’s just so hard to accept when these guys have worked so hard to retain the world title, which New Zealand as a nation has never done before.
“But they know they’re the fastest in the world so that will count going forward.”
Elliott wasn’t blaming the riders for the mistake, insisting there was a fine line between nailing a run and changing over too early.
“You can see the difference between our time and the French, it wasn’t as though it was tight. It didn’t matter if it was a bike length, we still smashed them.
“It’s about execution and when you’re at this level and the guys are going 70km/h, the execution’s got to be perfect, and it clearly wasn’t.
“Frustration is how much work they’ve gone through to retain this world title and we know they’re in the best shape they’ve ever been in. So the frustration is they know they’ve done that, the time says they’ve done that, but unfortunately rules are rules and we have to play by them.”