Stephanie Morton wins third Commonwealth Games cycling gold, Amy Cure wins her second
SPRINT star Stephanie Morton is fast becoming the complete package after joining Australian cycling royalty with her third gold medal of this week’s Commonwealth Games on another golden night at the Anna Meares Velodrome.
AUSTRALIAN sprint star Stephanie Morton is fast becoming the complete package after joining Australian cycling royalty with her third gold medal of this week’s Commonwealth Games, while teammate Amy Cure put the finishing touches to total team domination by winning the 10km women’s scratch race.
Morton, 27, produced a masterclass performance in the women’s keirin final last night to beat Kaarle McCulloch in an Aussie 1-2 while Kiwi Natasha Hansen was third.
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On a night when it was raining gold for Australia at the velodrome with earlier wins to Matthew Glaetzer and Cure, Morton’s win was the 10th gold medal for the host nation on the track and elevated her to very rare air.
Having already won the team sprint and individual sprint this week, Morton joined Anna Meares, Kathy Watt and Cameron Meyer as the only Australian cyclists to win three gold medals at the one Games.
“I can’t believe I’ve ticked all the boxes I wanted to coming into these Games,” Morton said.
“I wanted gold in the team sprint, sprint and in the keirin, and in the 500m (time trial) yesterday I absolutely rode out of my skin and got a massive PB.”
It was also Australia’s 10th gold medal on the velodrome in four days — taking them past their total of seven from Glasgow four years ago.
After gliding through her first round heat and semi-final, Morton brought her A-game to the final and was never seriously threatened.
She went to the front with two laps to go and had McCulloch on her wheel but neither her teammate or any rival could find the speed to come around the outside and she held on for a convincing win.
Morton had already stepped out of Meares’ shadow as Australia’s new queen of the track but she is now putting together the type of performances that could make her the best in the world come Tokyo 2020.
While she has always had the pure speed, her tactical sprinting has improved dramatically in recent years and now her confidence in a bunch race like the keirin has gone to the next level after a stint in the Japanese keirin series last year.
Tasmanian pocket rocket Cure won a thrilling 10km women’s scratch race after she
timed her move to perfection at the finish, hitting the front with a lap to go and the field simply wasn’t strong enough to come around her as she beat Scotland’s Neah Evans and England’s Emily Kay.
But the win was built on the pure grunt work from her teammates Ashlee Ankudinoff and Annette Edmondson who covered every move earlier in the race to set a tempo in the closing stages that prevented any counter attack.
“It was amazing,” Cure said.
“I was a bit disappointed with my ride yesterday, but I come out today with a different mindset, and I wanted to give it everything.
“The girls backed me out there, they gave me everything, a perfect ride, I’m so happy I could bring it home, I can’t thank them enough.
“We went in there with a plan, and executed it perfectly, so it was great to come home with a win and to do it in front of a home crowd.”
The Aussies were sitting 1-2-3 on the front of the bunch with four laps to go when Ankudinoff buried herself with her head down and handed over to Edmondson who maintained the pace before Cure did her thing.
“It was a special win, not just for Amy, but for all of us,” Ankudinoff said.
“We came into this one to win and finish on a high, we have had a great Games, and this really tops it off.”
It was Cure’s second gold medal of the week after she was part of Australia’s successful women’s team pursuit on the opening night.
It was also her first individual Games gold after she won silver in the scratch race in Glasgow in 2014.
Cure is a two-time world champion in the team pursuit and points race but this may go down as her finest individual performance in front of a screaming home crowd in the velodrome.
It also made up for the disappointment of missing the podium in the women’s points race on Saturday where she was expected to be a major player.
The gold medal was Australia’s ninth of the Games and came just minutes after Matthew Glaetzer broke the sea level world record on his way to winning the 1km time trial.
Australia set itself a target of winning eight gold medals across track, road and mountain bike at these Games and Cure’s result made it job done with a week of racing still to come.
“We are a new team,” Edmondson said.
“There has been a lot of changes in Cycling Australia.
“We have had a boost of freshness in the team.
“We just really wanted to create a good team environment.”
Originally published as Stephanie Morton wins third Commonwealth Games cycling gold, Amy Cure wins her second
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