BEATING Australian representatives and earning praise from a Commonwealth Games gold medallist – an already good track season for Eliza Bennett just got better.
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The Bathurst Cycling Club and Western Region Academy of Sport talent began her first track cycling season at under 19s level with Oceania gold, but on Saturday at Dunc Gray Velodrome she faced even stiffer competition.
The 15-year-old was placed in the junior 19-elite women’s category for the annual Clarence Street Cyclery Cup.
She placed third in the invitational keirin, ranked second after two rounds of the sprint spectacular and in the feature event – the Clarence Street Cyclery Cup – placed second behind Commonwealth Games gold medallist and three-time track world champion Kaarle McCulloch.
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They were performances which drew praise from McCulloch and earned Bennett an invite to a training camp she will run this Saturday.
“Eliza I’m really excited to see what she can do in the future, she’s got some great talent there,” McCulloch said.
Bennett’s father Damien was track side to watch his daughter and said she was delighted with both McCulloch’s praise and her efforts on the boards against many NSW Institute of Sport riders.
“For sprints she was thrown in with the likes of Kaarle, Selina Hou, who is another NSWIS rider, Josie Talbot, who is more enduro but she's still an NSWIS rider and an awesome rider,” he said.
"So Eliza was a bit stunned, but she'd raced them before at the Bathurst Open Carnival, so she was 'Okay, here we go'.
"So the sprint stuff, she had quite a bit of fun with that.”
The Clarence Street Cyclery Cup is a handicapped event and after winning the under 17s women’s edition last year, Bennett was keen to see how she would go against more experienced rivals.
She was off a 150 metres handicap with three other riders for the eight-lap leg burner.
That group was positioned at the front early, but the talented scratch markers worked well to bring things back together with three laps remaining and set up an exciting finish.
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“Kaarle, she had some good helpers in that race, Josie Talbot and Chloe Heffernan who are also NSWIS riders, so that basically got Kaarle to where she needed to be,” Damien Bennett said.
“Eliza went from being in the front bunch to ending up, I think 10th place was her worst position, with about a lap to go.
“But she got out behind those other girls, pushed one girl out a little bit to create a bit of space. So coming into the last lap she got clear and was able to sprint down the outside. She was able to get past all the other girls, the NSWIS girls, and Kaarle was the only one she was trying to run down.
“Kaarle was fantastic, she was very measured in what she did and was always going to win. But Eliza managed to slide up on the outside of all the others and get second with a throw of the wheel, I think she got second by half a wheel.”
McCulloch nudged out Bennett in the final sprint to the line with Talbot and Heffernan around a length behind them.