Riding high after pivotal role

Ex-MBC student aided Atkins in Southland tour

Former Marlborough Boys' College cycling star Cameron Karwowski still can't believe he helped one of his PowerNet team-mates Josh Atkins win the prestigious Tour of Southland.

Atkins, at 19 years of age and a past winner of the Forrest GrapeRide in Blenheim, held his nerve and his form during Sunday's final stage to become the youngest winner of New Zealand's toughest cycling event in its 55-year history.

Atkins heaped praise on his team-mates – Karwowski, Tom Scully, Shane Archbold, Myron Simpson and Alex Frame – for the crucial part they played in his win.

Based at Invercargill since moving from Blenheim nearly three years ago, Karwowski said Atkins' victory and his team's runnerup position overall was very significant. "Huge for me. It's still sinking in, quite frankly. Just to have a team-mate win it down here on the roads I've been on for a while is pretty cool. Quite a lot of respect from the whole cycling community and the wider Southland public."

Hometown advantage definitely helped, said Karwowski, in more ways than one. "Every time I turned a corner I would know when we were about to be attacked or whether we had to ramp it up and make it harder for everyone. Even the way the valleys are set up and what the wind is doing. The wind was just a crucial factor."

Karwowski said he's ridden in worse weather during club races in Southland, so the snow, sleet, wind and rain didn't bother him too much. "Probably helped me more than it helped some Aucklanders, so I'm not complaining about it."

While the PowerNet team was aiming to retain the under-23 title they won last year, Karwowski said that once early tour leader Hayden Roulston pulled out through illness, they knew they were in the title hunt.

"I thought Josh would quite easily make the top five. Rolly [Roulston] has got such a stranglehold on the tour that as soon as he pulled out I knew Josh could get up there because there were three under-23 riders leading."

Karwowski didn't expect to be riding the latter stage of the tour as a work-horse protecting a team-mate's tour lead but he enjoyed it. He believes the hard racing and an intensive season racing in Europe has him in a good position to realise his aim of making the elite New Zealand track team for a World Cup meeting.

"Hopefully a spot for me in the New Zealand team in the Beijing World Cup round in January or it could be a third year in the under- 23 squad. I'm an outside chance for the Olympic track team next year if my form comes up incredibly – which it might do from the tour, riding so hard. Anything is possible."

When the 20-year-old left Marlborough, he chose cycling ahead of university study, even though at the time he was at best a longshot to make the New Zealand junior team. However, he's gone from strength to strength training and competing on the Invercargill velodrome and has no regrets.

He's already won the junior world sprint teams' title in 2009 and will ride at the Oceania champs on that track in January.

While sprinting has been his specialty to date, he sees his track future in the longer events, the 4000m individual and teams pursuit, scratch and points races plus the omnium.

An intelligent and fiercely determined competitor, Karwowski said that while he's living his dream, he is combining cycling with study by correspondence from Massey University doing a business degree.

He went south with only a slim chance of making the national junior team and ended up a world champion.

You certainly wouldn't rule him out being the bolter in the New Zealand team for next year's Olympics – he is one of 10 riders vying for five places.

- The Marlborough Express