Olympic hopeful confident about chances of qualifying

With nearly 500 International Cycling Union (ICU) points on the season, Zach Bell is confident about his chances of qualifying for the upcoming Olympics in Beijing this summer.

With nearly 500 International Cycling Union (ICU) points on the season, Zach Bell is confident about his chances of qualifying for the upcoming Olympics in Beijing this summer.

The Yukon track cyclist had his most accomplished year to date in the sport, highlighted by wins in Pennsylvania, a fourth place finish at the Pan American Championships in May and a silver medal in the scratch race at the Sidney World Cup in November.

Bell’s success has been a direct result of his consistency throughout the entire season, which started after March’s 2007 World Championships.

“Consistency was what was going to get me in for sure because I don’t have as much international experience as the best guys around right now,” he said.

“I knew if I peaked really well I could win one of those events, but it was a bit too much of a gamble, because I still do make some decisions that aren’t good decisions in races. 

That is one of the reasons why the Olympics is going to be so crucial because it will give me more international experience.

So it was definitely a strategy to collect those points right from the get go and make sure the guys that would be competing with me would really have to chase me hard in the second half of the season to catch up.”

The top 22 track cyclists in the world will be represented at the Olympics. Going into this year’s World Championships, held in Manchester, England, Bell, 25, was ranked 10th.

The World Championships was the final qualifying race for the Summer Games.

At the World Championships, Bell was battling through a separated collar bone injury that he suffered five weeks ago in Australia and ended up crashing at the competition.

His coaches decided to pull him out of the event because of his already high point total and so that he could take time to heal the injury, which is still taped up.

Although the world ranking in the sport hasn’t been released, Bell estimates he is currently around 12th place.

The official announcement for the Olympic team in cycling is expected to be given to Canada in the next few days.

One of the races that went a long way to helping Bell’s chances of qualifying for the Beijing Games was a seventh place finish in a World Cup event in Sydney,

Australia in November.

The placing earned him around 150 ICU points and was his last really big point total on the season.

He plans to begin training for the Games in the coming weeks and will compete in both track and road races leading up to August.

Bell is unsure which races he will be able to compete in because of the loss of three sponsors for his professional cycling team, Symmetrics, which happened in late November.

Symmetrics is an all-Canadian team, based out of B.C. and made up of eight core members, including Bell.

Two of the main sponsors pulled out because they wanted to focus their attention on the 2010 Winter Games, being held in Vancouver.

The loss of the third sponsor was a result of economical problems faced by the company.

The team has enough money in their budget to operate until June, but after that they will have no choice but to breakup if a new sponsorship deal is not established.

They are hoping to reach an agreement with a Canadian company or a corporation with Canadian interests in mind.

Bell, who was recently in Whitehorse speaking to school groups and individuals interested in sports, said the team was surprised by the loss of sponsors.

“We had the biggest year the team has had and we were the number one ranked team in North and South America and had the number one guy in North and South America,” he said.

“It was a bit of a shocker for us, but that is the nature of sponsorship in cycling. We were fortunate that we have a good group of guys on the team who are willing to stick it out and try and keep the team together through this rough patch to get these new sponsors because a lot of other teams, the guys would just jump ship.”

He said sponsorship is everything in professional cycling and that there are some benefits for sponsors to getting involved with the team.

“Especially Canadian sponsors that are international exporters and that’s our thing because we are an internationally visible team,” Bell said.

“I’m not confident that something is just going to fall into our lap, but I think there is a 50/50 chance that something could come up.

But it is going to need to come up from a sponsor that is interested in the riders or interested in cycling.”

Bell will go ahead with the Olympic training regardless of what happens with the sponsorship situation and said his goal for the Games is to be as competitive as possible in all of his races.

“For this Olympics, I am a little bit of a wild card, so I am one of the guys who can spoil it for the big names,” he said.

“I’m not going to be on the list of favourites, just based on the track record of the guys that are going to be there, but I am definitely one of the spoilers.

If I come in really good form, my coaches and I believe it is reasonable to be in the top five.

If you are in the top five it is reasonable to have an unbelievable day and if everything works out I could be on the podium.”

He credits a lot of his success this season to the work he has done for the past year and a half with his coach Richard Wooles.

“It started paying off with Richard right away,” Bell said.

“I had some good rides last year, but it started really paying off in the summer.

I saw big results on the road that I wouldn’t have been able to achieve without the work we did.

He has pushed me to seek out the best possible situation.

When you are working with limited budgets, he has helped me understand how we can create better situations instead of making the most out of situations that we’re in.”

Bell said he enjoyed his time back in the Yukon and appreciates all the support that he has received in the territory over the years.

“It definitely lifts a lot of the weight because I know there is people up here that will have my back if the corporate side doesn’t come through,” he said.

“That’s why I come up here to try and give back as much as I can because having grown up here I know what it is like.

Every little bit makes it quite a bit easier, but it’s good to know that there is people there and I never find myself going into these financial crises with the team worried.”