Paris Olympic Games double gold medallist, Ellesse Andrews will make an unpretentious return to top-level cycling in the opening round of the 2026 UCI Track World Cup in Perth this weekend.<\/p>\n
Andrews joins fellow Cycling New Zealand high performance squad rider, Olivia King\u00a0 to compete in the three-day competition which opens the 2026 UCI World Cup season, signalling the start of the qualifying process ultimately to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games.<\/p>\n
After a significant break following Paris, Andrews has slowly returned to training, mostly off the track, and the pair will use the opening World Cup to trial their racing processes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is definitely a low-key start to what is going to be a busy year of international racing for us,\u201d said Cycling New Zealand Head Sprint Coach, Jon Andrews.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe focus this weekend is mostly on the technical and tactical execution both in sprint and keirin.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have not done any specific tapering or physical preparation for this competition. It is an opportunity for a UCI World Cup relatively close to home to kick-start our year.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the competition offers UCI ranking points, the first significant competition for the kiwi pair will be back-to-back UCI World Cup competitions in Hong Kong-China and Malaysia in late April, followed by a further international event in Japan.<\/p>\n
Both King and Andrews will compete in sprint qualifying on day two and keirin racing on day three, with the Perth event drawing some healthy competition including European keirin champion Alina Lysenko (AIN), former world champion Nick Degrendele (BEL), multi-world champion Lea Sophie Friedrich (GER) and two-time world keirin world champion Nina Sato (JPN).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paris Olympic Games double gold medallist, Ellesse Andrews will make an unpretentious return to top-level cycling in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":519170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":["post-519169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}