{"id":526405,"date":"2026-03-08T08:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T08:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/526405\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T08:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T08:48:08","slug":"kiwi-cyclist-stood-down-after-striking-competitor-during-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/526405\/","title":{"rendered":"Kiwi cyclist stood down after striking competitor during race"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  [&amp;_p]:tit-sub-xl tit-sub-xl md:[&amp;_p]:d-tit-sub-xl md:d-tit-sub-xl mb-[1.3rem]\">A New Zealand cyclist has been stood down by his team after he struck a competitor during a race in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">Kiaan Watts lashed out at Marjin Maas during the Salverda Bouw Ster race in Zwolle, hitting him in the helmet.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">He could then be seen gesturing and shouting at the Dutchman.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">It was unclear what caused Watts to lose his temper.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">&#8220;The team expects that its riders race in a sporting and professional manner at all times and wishes to extend an apology to Marijn Maas,&#8221; NSN said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">&#8220;The team has decided to remove Kiaan from Dorpenomloop Rucphen (road race) tomorrow to give him time to reflect on his actions and consequences.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">In an Instagram post, Watts also apologised to Maas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">&#8220;I have apologised in person, but I want to also publicly apologise to Marijn Maas from Beat CC p\/b Saxo team for my actions today, as well as my team and sponsors, the Salverda Bouw Ster van Zwolle race organisers, and UCI commissaries.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">&#8220;I deeply regret what I did in the heat of the moment, and will take the time to reflect on my actions and learn from this.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A New Zealand cyclist has been stood down by his team after he struck a competitor during a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526406,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85,98898],"class_list":["post-526405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526405","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=526405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}