South Australia power to fourth straight men's team sprint national championship

South Australia has extended their elite men's team sprint national title winning streak to four on the final day of the 2025 AusCycling Track National Championships in Brisbane.

Maxwell Liebeknecht, Tayte Ryan and Leigh Hoffman opened the throttle in the gold medal final versus New South Wales at Anna Meares Velodrome, which was an expected South Australian win when Danny Barber was confirmed to not be starting for the boys in blue.

A winning margin of 2.807 seconds was the total damage from the national title final, with South Australia chasing their own championship record from 2024 (Liebeknecht, Hoffman, Matthew Glaetzer) but falling short in a time of 43.191, marginally outside of the 42.965 marker they needed to better.

James Brister completed the national championship team after riding qualifying in third wheel, which South Australia topped via a 43.699 ride.

"We were chasing the record," Hoffman said.

"It's been a big week for all of us within the team, Tayte doing both sprint days, the keirin and also he did the kilo. So his legs were feeling it, my legs were feeling it. Max also got into the 7-12 keirin final last night so it's been a big few days.

"Our hopes were high, we were crunching the splits earlier in the day and with a hotter day we were thinking, 'alright, we can do this', but unfortunately we didn't.

"Still happy with the time that we put down and for us being so young – Max, 20, Tayte, 19 and me 24, the older one of the group now – to still put down a 43.1, that is pretty sensational.

"I think just with trying to protect third wheel with being second wheel could have been a bit dangerous and could have blown them off the wheel, so we went for the safe bet of putting me in three and just sitting behind Tayte and he punched through pretty hard and pretty well and ended up going pretty even so it was nice."

New South Wales' Noah Mason, Xavier Bland and John Trovas laid down a 45.998 in the gold medal final, more than a second slower than with new keirin national champion Barber in the line-up during their 44.659 qualifying time.

Victoria A overturned a small qualifying deficit to Western Australia to win the bronze medal final in a time of 45.163, 0.474 ahead of the trio from the west.

A change in order that placed Sam Gallagher at third wheel from first wheel earlier in the afternoon proved the difference, earning himself and teammates Nikolas Papadakis and Jade Maddern a trip to the TrackNats podium.

Feature picture: Mackenzie Sweetnam