Campbell Stewart

EVENT: Cycling – Men's Track/Road: Team Pursuit, 15km Scratch Race, 40km Points Race, Road Race

Cyclist Campbell Stewart, born in Palmerston North in 1998, did a lot in a very short time once he became an international cyclist.

At the 2015 world junior championships in Astana, Kazakhstan, he won gold medals in the omnium (a multi-discipline event) and the scratch race. The next year he went even better at the world juniors in Aigle, Switzerland, retaining his omnium crown, and winning the team pursuit with Jared Gray, Tom Sexton and Connor Brown. For good measure, Stewart and Sexton took silver in the madison.

Stewart won the Halberg Emerging Talent award in 2016.

He continued to impress and in 2018 he won two silver medals at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, in the points and scratch races. He was also in the pursuit team along with Sexton, Nick Kergozou and Regan Gough. The New Zealanders were third in the qualifying round, but were disqualified after one of their bikes failed a technical inspection.

Just turned 20, Stewart showed speed, strength and maturity beyond his years on the Gold Coast and was clearly a champion in the making. And so it proved.

At the Tokyo Olympics the next year, Stewart rode with Aaron Gate, Gough and Jordan Kerby in the team pursuit. The New Zealanders went desperately close to earning a medal, losing the bronze medal race to Australia. Then, after Gate had broken his collarbone in a fall during that race against Australia, Stewart replaced him in the omnium and madison events. In the omnium, he far exceeded expectations by finishing second. Stewart was lying seventh until he produced a remarkable performance in the final event of the omnium, the points race, to lift himself to second. He placed ninth in the madison.

He followed his memorable Olympic debut with for two more medals at the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games, gold in the team pursuit with Gate, Kerby and Sexton, and silver in points race. He was busy in Birmingham and also rode the road race, where he finished 59th of 124 starters, though his real work was in a support role. The race turned out well for New Zealand when Gate won the gold medal.

Stewart has also built a fine record at the world track championships, winning a gold, two silvers and two bronzes from 2018-23.

In 2018, at Apeldoorn in the Netherlands, he finished fifth in the omnium and combined with Gough, Dylan Kennett and Kergozou for a fifth placing in the team pursuit. In 2019, in Pruszków, Poland, Stewart hit the jackpot, winning the omnium – he finished third in the scratch race, fourth in the tempo race, fifth in the elimination race and won the points race to finish the omnium with 137 points, well ahead of Frenchman Ben Thomas. In the team pursuit in Pruszków, Stewart, Sexton, Gate and Kergozou qualified second, but finished only eighth.

In Berlin in 2020, Stewart and Gate won the silver medal in the madison and Stewart was sixth in a closely-fought omnium event. In the team pursuit, Stewart, Gate, Gough and Kerby picked up the silver medal. The team rode impressively in their first two outings but were outgunned by Denmark in the final, in their slowest ride of the championship.

In Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France, in 2022, the pursuit team of Stewart, Gate, Sexton and Kergozou qualified fourth and finished fifth overall after being eliminated by eventual gold medallists Great Britain. Stewart and Gate were ninth in the madison.

At Glasgow in 2023, Stewart, Gate, Sexton and Kergozou picked up the bronze in the team pursuit. They qualified second, lost to Italy and then beat Australia for the bronze. Gate and Stewart finished third in a tight madison contest. Stewart was seventh in the omnium.

Though he shone in endurance track racing, Stewart has also proved a fine road racer and is contracted to the Australian team Jayco–AlUla.

He won the national junior road race in 2015, and won stages of the Tour of Southland in 2016, 2019 and 2020. Riding in Europe he had early success in the Netherlands and by 2023, riding for Jayco, gained his first start in a first Grand Tour race, the famed Giro d'Italia, in which he finished 108th. His role for Jayco has been to lead out the team's sprinters.

Stewart spends much of his year in the Catalan town of Gerona in Spain. Many cyclists are based there, included teams from Australia, Great Britain and the US.