Sam Gaze may have just delivered New Zealand's equal best placing of sixth in the men's cross-country mountain bike race at the Olympic Games but his disappointment at the end of Monday's race was clear.
The rider from New Zealand was hoping for more, with his recent results having provided ample fuel for dreams of a medal charge. However, a different story played out on Élancourt Hill for the reigning short-track world champion and silver medallist in the 2023 cross-country rainbow jersey race.
A tough start and subsequent chase back to the front of the race took its toll and Gaze crossed the line three spots shy of the podium as Tom Pidcock (Great Britain), Victor Koretzky (France) and Alan Hatherly (South Africa) swept up the medals he sought.
“It was not what I came for," said Gaze of his sixth-place finish in a media release from Cycling New Zealand. "Once I got pushed back in that first corner, then I was proud of how I worked my way back and got into a great position but I just didn’t have the legs to go with Pidcock."
Gaze lined up among the 36 starters in the second row and then lost out in the squeeze for positions on the banked gravelly lead into the tighter sections of the eight-lap, one-hour and 26-minute long race. He was outside the top 20 at the first time split but just kept fighting his way up the field until halfway through the race he was among the top five as one of the key riders in pursuit of Koretzky and Hatherly out the front.
“I’m quite heartbroken but I did absolutely everything I could,” Gaze said in post-race comments reported by The New Zealand Herald. “At one point I believed a medal was still in reach after my horrible start – it was a terrible, not good enough start.”
That moment when a medal seemed within reach passed when Pidcock – on the charge back to the front of the race after a puncture – first joined the chase group including Gaze and then pushed the pace in the fifth lap. As the defending champion went out in pursuit, of the South African rider and home nation favourite, the rider from New Zealand's effort to stay on Pidcock's wheel took a toll and Gaze's medal hopes drifted away.
"When I tried to follow Pidcock back to Alan Hatherly, that was it. I knew I didn't have it then. That was the moment I lost it," Gaze said in the New Zealand Herald report.
However, at his second Olympic Games – having ridden in Rio but missing out for Tokyo – he kept fighting for the best finish possible, crossing the line 1:41 behind two-time Olympic gold medallist Pidcock to take sixth, the same placing delivered by compatriot Anton Cooper at Tokyo in 2021.
The result may not have been what Gaze had been looking for but he has come a long way in the eight years since his first Olympic Games appearance in Rio as a 20-year-old – where he was lapped and finished 37th. However, the 28-year-old who also rides on the road for Alpecin-Deceuninck on the road is hoping he can go further still next time.
“Tomorrow I will look back and see that was a ride to be proud of," said Gaze in the Cycling New Zealand media release. "And I have already started thinking about the world championships next month and on to Los Angeles in four years time."
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