SA Juniors Kicking Goals at Road Nationals

It was a huge week for our Junior State Team at Junior Road Nationals last week where they competed for National Champinoships glory in the Time Trial, Criterium and Road Race in Wollongong as a precursor to the World Championships going on right now! The kids did us proud riding outside themselves all week and it all culminated in some great team results. Several of our upcoming Junior riders chose to travel separately from the State Team for personal reasons, but we want to celebrate the SA riders all the same.

The highlight of the week’s racing is Wil Holmes’ U17 Road Race National Championship win, a hard fought victory against a field of riders who had pushed him all week in the TT and Crit where he had to settle for a silver medal in both. It was a big day for SA riders as we finished with 3 riders in the top 10 of that U17 RR (Kalan Tucker 6^th and Will Mathwin 8^th), and the U15 boys (Benjamin Kade, Fraser Oertel, Liam Underwood and Angus Corbett) rode a great team race to get Will Brown to the finish where he unfortunately had to settle for 4^th and agonisingly close to the podium. In the U15 TT, dark horse Fraser Oertel managed 9^th place in his first Nationals which is to be applauded. Jack Clark’s 7^th place in the U17 Time Trial is also worthy of a mention, a massive placing for an upcoming rider.

Paige Squire rode valiantly all week in the U15 races, SA’s only entrant finishing 15^th in the Road Race, 17^th in the TT and 19^th in the Crit. Our U17 girls rode out of their skins all week in a tough field, Leani Van Der Berg managing 10^th in the Road Race with Ava Schmidtke not far back in 17^th. Ava Wilson cracked the top ten in the TT earlier in the week but was unable to feature in the finish of the Crit due to a heavy crash.

We congratulate all of the riders on their efforts!

Full results are available to view here: https://results.auscycling.org.au/Road/2022/JunRoadNats/

The State Team representing South Australia at the Junior Road Nationals was as follows:

U15 - Women
Paige Squire (Norwood CC)

U15 - Men
William Brown (Port Adelaide CC)
Fraser Oertel (AMBC)
Benjamin Kade (Whyalla CC)
Angus Corbett (Norwood CC)
Liam Underwood (Norwood CC)

U17 - Women
Ava Wilson (Norwood CC)
Ava Schmidtke (South Coast CC)
Leani Van Der Berg (South Coast CC)

U17 - Men
Tully Hickman (Port Adelaide CC)
Kalan Tucker (Norwood CC)
Sebastian Zajaczkowski (Norwood CC)
William Mathwin (Norwood CC)