{"id":525713,"date":"2026-03-08T00:45:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T00:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/525713\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T00:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T00:45:09","slug":"nz-cyclist-kiaan-watts-disqualified-after-punch-on-rival-in-dutch-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/525713\/","title":{"rendered":"NZ cyclist Kiaan Watts disqualified after punch on rival in Dutch race"},"content":{"rendered":"

NZ Herald<\/p>\n

7 Mar, 2026 10:22 PMQuick Read<\/p>\n

Subscribe to listenAccess to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.Subscribe now<\/p>\n

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Kiaan Watts’s altercation with Marijn Maas.<\/p>\n

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New Zealand professional cyclist Kiaan Watts has been removed from an event in the Netherlands after he appeared to punch a fellow competitor at the front of the race.<\/p>\n

Watts\u2019s team issued a statement, saying that the team \u201cdeeply regrets\u201d his actions.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe team expects that its riders race in
\n a sporting and professional manner at all times and wishes to extend an apology to Marijn Maas, the BEAT CC p\/b Saxo team, race organisers and the UCI commissaires\u201d, the NSN Development Team\u2019s post on X (formerly Twitter) read.\n <\/p>\n

Watts, a 24-year-old from Tauranga, was listed as disqualified from the Salverda Bouw Ster van Zwolle (1.2).<\/p>\n

His team say he will be given time to \u201creflect on his actions and the consequences\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NZ Herald 7 Mar, 2026 10:22 PMQuick Read Subscribe to listenAccess to Herald Premium articles require a Premium…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525714,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[9490,223813,64,63,22806,261563,784,9485,198023,78783,5946,183336,5587,5588,4717,261561,16255,1697,2652,33372,106706,3173,91561,131801,85,261562,3205],"class_list":["post-525713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-after","tag-appeared","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-been","tag-competitor","tag-cycling","tag-cyclist","tag-disqualified","tag-dutch","tag-event","tag-fellow","tag-from","tag-front","tag-in","tag-kiaan","tag-netherlands","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-professional","tag-punch","tag-race","tag-removed","tag-rival","tag-sports","tag-watts","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525713","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=525713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}