{"id":318454,"date":"2026-03-08T01:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T01:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/318454\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T01:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T01:14:10","slug":"nz-cyclist-kiaan-watts-disqualified-after-punch-on-rival-in-dutch-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/318454\/","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":318455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[74,3378,1558,99932,23676,21171,32428,8231,29052,71,1668,78,60273,8764,111,139,69,90,12886,101263,7798,5196,1041,213,49771,80],"class_list":["post-318454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-after","tag-appeared","tag-been","tag-competitor","tag-cyclist","tag-disqualified","tag-dutch","tag-event","tag-fellow","tag-from","tag-front","tag-in","tag-kiaan","tag-netherlands","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","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\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}