Former Gunnedah cyclist Kurt Eather received his trophy as NSW Cyclist of the Year 2021 at Wollongong earlier this month.
The 22-year-old should have received the award last year but the COVID pandemic forced the cancellation of the presentation function, which eventually took place at the end of the World Cycling Championships last week.
Kurt and his younger brother Dylan are in the top rank of Australian cycling’s rising talent and are members of developing and emerging national high-performance squads. Both have won national track and road age titles.
In the year (2021) that Kurt won NSW under 23 Cyclist of the Year award, he took out the state road race (108km) at Goulburn and the State Criterium in the Hunter Valley.
This year he was the sole NSW representative in a squad of emerging cyclists who trained for a month with the Australian team which then took part in the recent Commonwealth Games in Birmingham (UK).
The boys are the sons of former local residents Vaughn and Janette Eather, the family leaving Gunnedah in 2005 for Dubbo.
The family has since moved to Niagara Park, near Ourimbah on the Central Coast, which brings the boys closer to high-level training and competition. They train every day, including three days a week at the Dunc Gray Velodrome at Bass Hill in Sydney.
Over the last few weeks, they were helping Institute of Sport staff at the World Cycling Championships at Wollongong, where Kurt was presented with his Cyclist of the Year trophy by AusCycling national board director Craig Bingham.
Over the coming long weekend, both boys will be racing at a major carnival in Wagga.
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