{"id":374910,"date":"2026-04-11T19:06:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T19:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/374910\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T19:06:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T19:06:18","slug":"new-zealand-cyclist-kiaan-watts-banned-for-punching-fellow-rider","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/374910\/","title":{"rendered":"New Zealand cyclist Kiaan Watts banned for punching fellow rider"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"New<\/p>\n

\nNew Zealand cyclist Kiaan Watts wins a stage on the Tour of Southland, 2026.
\nPhoto: \u00a9 Tour of Southland 2026 \/ PHOTOSPORT\n<\/p>\n

World cycling’s governing body UCI has banned New Zealand’s Kiaan Watts for 25 days after he punched a fellow rider during a race<\/a> last month.<\/p>\n

Video footage showed the 24-year-old punching Dutch cyclist Marijn Maas in the head during the Salverda Bouw Ster van Zwolle race in the Netherlands on 7 March.<\/p>\n

UCI said Watts had accepted the sanction and will serve a suspension until 2 May.<\/p>\n

“Kiaan Watts will serve a period of suspension of 25 days, with the one-day suspension imposed on the rider by his team on 8 March being credited from the period of suspension,” UCI said in a statement.<\/p>\n

After the incident, Watts posted an apology on social media and said he had acted in the heat of the moment, while his NSN Development Team also issued an apology.<\/p>\n

“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, the BEAT CC p\/b Saxo team, race organisers, and the UCI Commissaires,” it said.<\/p>\n

Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero, a daily newsletter<\/a> curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n

– Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand cyclist Kiaan Watts wins a stage on the Tour of Southland, 2026. Photo: \u00a9 Tour of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45,213],"class_list":{"0":"post-374910","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-public-radio","16":"tag-radio-new-zealand","17":"tag-rnz","18":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374910","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=374910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}