New Zealand's dominant showing at this year's cycling in the Commonwealth Games has continued Sunday morning, with four more medals - including three golds - won in London.
After qualifying with a Commonwealth Games record time on Saturday evening NZT, Bryony Botha returned to the Lee Valley Velodrome on Sunday morning to add the golden tint to her campaign with Australia's Maeve Plouffe hoping to stop her.
Botha opened up a commanding 0.7s lead in the first 500m of the 3000m race and continued to grow it relentlessly throughout, pushing the advantage to 2.913s at the halfway mark.
Despite the huge advantage, Botha continued to push the pace as she chased down Plouffe with only the finishing line stopping her from catching the Australian but she once again broke the Commonwealth Games record with a time of 3:18.456.
Botha's triumph adds another chapter to New Zealand's stacked history in the event with Alison Shanks [2010], Sarah Ulmer [2002 and 1998] and Madonna Harris [1990] all previous winners for Aotearoa. Ulmer also took home a silver in 1994.
Aaron Gate and Tom Sexton then added two more medals to New Zealand's tally with the pair getting to battle it out in a rare, all-Kiwi gold medal race in the men's individual pursuit.
Sexton jumped out to a daunting early lead in the opening 500m of 1.3s and continued to grow it to the 1000m mark in the 4000m race.
Despite Gate's best efforts to reduce the deficit, it remained the same by the halfway mark but Gate was starting to go up another gear, cutting Sexton's lead over the next 500m before taking the lead with the final quarter of the race to go.
Sexton tried to stay in the race but Gate had too much gas for the final sprint, taking the gold in 4:07.760 with Sexton 4.419s behind.
Regardless of the result, the pair celebrated each other's efforts in a special moment for New Zealand cycling.
Ellesse Andrews then added to the golden morning with a win in the women's individual sprint over Canada's Kelsey Mitchell, taking the best-of-three 2-0 with a photo finish in their opening encounter before sealing the deal by 0.091s in the second race.
New Zealand also had a chance for fifth cycling medal on day two in the men's keirin with Callum Saunders reaching the final but he came fifth while Trinidad and Tobago's Nicholas Paul took home the gold.
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