With a junior world title and new speed record, Jack is …

By Jarrod Potter
WEARING a rainbow jersey is a treasure most cyclists never get to experience, but Endeavour Hills’ Jack Cummings just won his first in Moscow.
Cummings, 17, was part of the Australian team pursuit that won gold at the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) Junior Track World Championships.
Cummings and his three, equally bleach-blond team-mates (a tradition for Australia’s ‘Baby’ Cyclones team) – Alexander Edmondson, Jackson Law and Alexander Morgan – smoked the competition and track and set a world record in the junior event at 4.03.632.
Cummings was thrilled to set the new benchmark for the team pursuit as it was something the team thought they could realistically achieve.
“In the team pursuit we qualified fastest and in the final we broke the world record on the way to winning the world title. We planned to do something no-one has really ever done. We worked our turns out so some of us were doing a lap-and-a-half, then a lap turn then three-quarters of a lap.
“In the back of our minds we wanted the world record, but it really depended on what it was like with the weather that day. I think we were all that hungry for the win that we wanted that world record as well.”
Of the race itself, Cummings remembers hearing the crowd and almost crashing out in the dying stages, after bumping pedals with one of his team-mates.
“I remember going around the track and hearing all the Australians in the crowd; we could hear them screaming loudest.
“One of the boy’s dads did this big loud whistle that he always does and I remember hearing that through my aero-helmet. Just coming up to the finish line, me and one of the other boys, our feet hit together and we thought we were going to crash right at the end, but we didn’t so it was alright.”
The different format of the Moscow velodrome had Cummings worried, but he overcame it as soon as he got wheel to ground.
“Moscow was completely different to any of the tracks we ride here in Melbourne. It’s longer and so much wider as well. Even though I’ve ridden on a velodrome for five years, this track was scary, but as soon as the world champs were on, it felt like we’d been riding it for years.”
The next big event for Australia is the Oceania titles, which leads into the 2012 UCI Junior Championships and from there Cummings has his eye set on even bigger prizes than a world championship jersey.
“I definitely want to be at the Olympics in 2016, already have that in my mind,” Cummings said. “Especially since our time is a world class time for the seniors, and we’ve done that as juniors, so I want to see myself first in Glasgow at the Commonwealth Games in 2014 then in Rio in 2016.”
Cummings is set on competing in as many different classifications of cycling as possible, first on the track then the open road. “Team pursuit is definitely my main focus and of the Australian team since Australia has always been good at it.
“I came sixth in the points race (on 29 points) and if I waited half a lap longer, I could’ve been second. So I just missed out on a medal there, so I definitely want to do a bit more points race training and the madison as well. I really want to win the points race next year because I didn’t even expect to be riding it this year, but my coach told me ‘we want you to achieve something you never thought you could’.”
“Road racing is on the cards as well.
“I want to try and race road to make the Australian road team next year. Hopefully I can pursue something on the road next year when I’ve got a bit more time. I see myself as the kind of person who can suffer all day, but am fast at the finish. I just want to try to be the best all-round bike rider I can be.”