Catherine Cheatley

Personal information

Full name

Catherine Cheatley (née Sell)

Born

6 April 1983
Whanganui, New Zealand

Height

1.70 m (5 ft 7 in)

Weight

64 kg (141 lb)

Team information

Current team

Retired

Discipline

Road, track

Role

Rider

Professional team(s)

2007–2008

Cheerwine Cycling Team

2009–2010

Colavita-Sutter Home

2011–2012

Colavita Forno d'Asolo

Major wins

New Zealand Championships (Road) (2004, 2006, 2011)
Oceania Games (Scratch) (2005)
Women's Tour of New Zealand (2005)
New Zealand Track Championships (Pursuit) (2007)
Fitchburg Longsjo Classic (2008)

Medal record

Women's track cycling
Competitor for New Zealand
World Championships
Bronze	2007 Palma de Mallorca	Points race

Infobox last updated on
19 August 2014

Catherine "Cath" Cheatley (née Sell;^[1] born 6 April 1983 in Whanganui) is a retired New Zealand professional road and track cyclist.^[2] She won two New Zealand championship titles in both road race and individual track pursuit, and later represented her nation New Zealand at the 2008 Summer Olympics. Before her official retirement in June 2012 because of sustained bike crash-related injuries, Cheatley moved to the United States to race for the Cheerwine and Colavita-Sutter Home pro cycling teams in the women's elite professional events on the UCI Women's World Cup, and UCI World Championships, where she earned the bronze medal for the women's points race in 2007.

Racing career

Professional career

Cheatley made her world championship debut at the 2007 UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Palma de Mallorca, Spain on 1 April, where she took home the bronze medal in the women's points race,^[3] adding to the individual pursuit gold she had won at the New Zealand track championships two weeks previously. Strong and impressive results landed her a spot on the United States' Cheerwine Cycling Team, which signified a start of her professional sporting career.^[4] While competing for Cheerwine under an exclusive two-year contract, Cheatley managed her team to "defend their jersey" and dominate the Fitchburg Longsjo Classic circuit title in 2008.^[5]

Cheatley qualified for the New Zealand squad in two cycling events at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing by receiving one of the nation's two available berths from the UCI World Cup and by finishing third in the points race from the UCI World Championships.^[6]^[7] In the women's road race, held on the second day of the Games, Cheatley posted a time of 3:41:08 to successfully complete a gruelling race with a fifty-third place finish, trailing behind US rider and two-time Olympian Christine Thorburn by a small amount of velocity.^[8]^[9] The following week, in the women's points race, Cheatley failed to collect a single point from the 10 scoring laps in a 25-km sprint race, finishing well down the field in seventeenth place.^[10]^[11]^[12]

When the Cheerwine folded the 2008 season, Cheatley transferred to Colavita-Sutter Home for two seasons, and then helped her women's cycling team grab an early lead on the first stage of the Cascade Cycling Classic before mounting a second place overall at the final circuit.^[13]^[14]

In 2011, Cheatley won her third road race title at the national championships in Christchurch.^[15] Shortly after, Cheatley was seriously injured in the round-the-mountain road crash around Mount Taranaki, suffering multiple fractures of her hip that required full surgery and rehabilitation.^[16]^[17] In June 2012, Cheatley had officially retired from competitive cycling, and instead, worked on a full-time role as one of BikeNZ's regional development coordinators.^[18]^[19]