New Zealand’s best road cyclists are paying their own way to the world championships in Canada next week, and one of them has publicly questioned why.
Finn Fisher-Black, the 24-year-old from Nelson who rides for Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe, told Cyclingnews that Cycling New Zealand’s policy of not funding its elite road riders at the championships changes how the team races.
“It’s a strange dynamic for NZ because we don’t get funding from Cycling New Zealand; we all pay to be there, so it’s also a strange dynamic, like we all kind of also want to do our own race,” Fisher-Black said.
The policy is written into the national body’s selection rules. “It is a condition of selection that riders must fund themselves to attend and compete at the 2026 UCI Road World Championships,” Cycling New Zealand’s selection criteria document reads, as quoted by Cyclingnews.
The 2026 UCI Road World Championships run in Montreal from 20 to 27 September, according to the UCI. The elite women’s road race is on Saturday 26 September and the elite men’s road race, more than 270 kilometres over a hilly city circuit, closes the championships on Sunday 27 September, Canadian time.
Fisher-Black will line up in the elite men’s team alongside George Bennett, Corbin Strong, Laurence Pithie, Joshua Kench and Ben Oliver. The elite women’s team is Niamh Fisher-Black, Ella Wyllie, Henrietta Christie and Bronwyn MacGregor, and those four riders will also compete without money from the national body, RNZ reported on Thursday.
The sore point for Fisher-Black is that nothing changed after his sister’s breakthrough last year. Niamh Fisher-Black took silver in the elite women’s road race at the 2025 world championships in Kigali, Rwanda, finishing 23 seconds behind Canada’s Magdeleine Vallieres. The NZ Herald reported at the time that she was the first New Zealander, woman or man, to stand on the podium in an elite world championship road race.
“We also do what we can, my sister was second last year so you’d think there’d maybe be some change, but for the moment it’s the same,” Fisher-Black told Cyclingnews.
He said the funding stopped around the time he started riding the elite world championships, and he put it down to where the national body chooses to spend its money. “It’s just the structure of Cycling New Zealand because they prioritise the track and the road; there’s no funding,” he said.
Cycling New Zealand does not dispute that track riders come first. In a statement to RNZ, chief executive Simon Peterson said the organisation is predominantly funded by High Performance Sport New Zealand for track cycling, and that this is unchanged in the cycle leading to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
“The achievements of New Zealand road cyclists have been impressive in both women and men, the current position has been clearly communicated to all riders for some years and before they make a decision to compete at the World Championships,” Peterson said.
The national body is not spending nothing. “Consistent with prior years, CNZ has committed $70,000 for the Road World Championships this year to cover UCI requirements and on the ground delivery. This is in-line with our investment agreement with High Performance Sport New Zealand,” Peterson said.
That money covers running the team on the ground, but the riders cover their own costs of getting there and competing. The arrangement is not new. Cyclingnews reported in 2022 that New Zealand sent a skeleton team to the world championships after riders were asked to pay their own way, and RNZ reported that the same selection condition has applied for each of the last four world championships.
The track has long been where New Zealand wins Olympic cycling medals, and that is where the high performance money goes. Elite road riders, by contrast, spend most of the season racing for their professional trade teams in Europe.
Fisher-Black acknowledged that side of it. “We have to do it like that, and we’re fortunate that for the rest of the year we have a lot of support from our teams,” he said.
His worry is what happens on race day when every rider has paid their own fare. A national team at the world championships normally rides for one or two leaders, with the rest sacrificing their own chances. When each rider is funding the trip, the incentive to chase a personal result is stronger. Fisher-Black said friendships within the squad should keep that in check, and that the plan was to have numbers in the final part of the race.
He arrives in Canada in good form. He finished on the podium at the Tour de Pologne in August and has just ridden the Vuelta a España in support of team leader Primož Roglič, finishing 52nd himself. The Montreal circuit suits a rider of his type, and he told Cyclingnews he wanted to be racing for a top 10 place.
“I’d love to go there and be fighting for the top 10,” he said. “It’d be nice just to be in the final.”
That would be a rare result for a New Zealand man. RNZ noted that no elite New Zealand male has finished in the top 10 at the road world championships since sprinter Julian Dean in 2005.
George Bennett is the most experienced rider in the men’s squad, and his best world championship finish is 18th, according to Cyclingnews. Kench and Oliver are making their elite debuts, while Pithie and Strong have each raced one elite world championship before.
The women’s team carries the stronger recent record. Niamh Fisher-Black, who rides for Lidl-Trek, returns as last year’s silver medallist.
Whether a medal in Montreal would shift the funding position is another question. Last year’s silver did not, and Peterson’s statement gives no sign that the track-first approach will change before Los Angeles.
Should Cycling New Zealand find money to send its road riders to the world championships, or is putting everything into the track the right call? Tell us what you think in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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