Gold medal a family affair but easy on the hugging
Kiwi cyclist Ellesse Andrews and her father are making a habit of breaking rules.
To be fair, an Olympic gold medal in the keirin yesterday, to go with the silver she won in the team sprint earlier in the week, is a valid excuse.
“She’s actually quite a hard taskmaster on me,’’ her father and coach, Jon, explained after Andrews powered to an emphatic victory at the Saint-Quentinen-Yvelines Velodrome.
“I’m not allowed to call her any nicknames, or anything like that. I have to call her Ellesse, she calls me Jon.
“There’s not a lot of hugging going on. Stuff that you might see at home, that’s off limits here.’’
Only, those boundaries, put in place after Jon came on board as Cycling New Zealand’s sprint coach last October, went out the window for the second time this week at the Paris Olympics.
Jon didn’t even watch her finish the final. So confident she had New Zealand’s
“I’m not allowed to call her any nicknames, or anything like that. I have to call her Ellesse, she calls me Jon.’’ Jon Andrews, right, coach of the women’s sprint team, and father of Ellesse, left
first Olympic gold medal on the track since Sarah Ulmer (2004) in the bag, he turned and dashed to the back straight after seeing her lead with less than a lap to go.
And there they hugged, the emotions flowing, after the 24-year-old blitzed her challengers with a powerhouse ride.
“I love the confidence, I admire the confidence,’’ Ellesse Andrews said, laughing.
“He ran over and he was right there for me when I finished.’’
Andrews led from the front when the field was released from behind the derny, and held her position for all but a brief moment.
Watching from the pits, Jon looked on anxiously to start with, expecting strong challenges from the likes of Great Britain’s Emma Finucane. “But Ellesse just dealt to them all much more easily than you’d imagine,’’ he said later.
“She’s got a unique physiology, and it just enables her to do some really amazing, cool things. She’s fast, but she’s got great length in her sprint. Super strong as we saw tonight to ride from the front and basically hold everyone off.’’
Andrews finished 0.062sec ahead of Dutchwoman Hetty van de Wouw, while Finucane took bronze, fading after she couldn’t get past Andrews at the start of the final lap.
“I could feel the other riders on my hip. I had a chat with my coach/dad before the race, and he said when you go 100%, you need to go 100%. So at that moment, I decided I am emptying the tank and I am not leaving anything out there.’’
Andrews, a silver medallist in Tokyo, is without a doubt the queen of keirin.
She can now call herself the Olympic champion, world champion and Commonwealth champion in the event.
“Olympic gold is the absolute pinnacle, so to have earned myself one of these is really special,’’ she said, clutching her new hardware moments after singing the national anthem atop the podium. And she’s not done yet. Andrews began her quest for a third medal in Paris this morning (NZT), when individual sprint qualifying started. She won bronze in the event at the world championships in Glasgow last year, and is expected to be in the mix in Paris.
However, that comes with a word of warning from Jon, who put his coaching hat back on with an eye on the final few days of competition.
“Ellesse is a really determined athlete, she will want to do well in the sprints. She's not quite as strong in the sprints, she's still learning in that space.’’
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