Struck by a mystery illness, New Zealand's Hayden Roulston has been ruled out of this Sunday's Commonwealth Games road race and will be replaced by Logan Hutchings. Following his silver medal performance in the 40 kilometre points race one week ago, where a certain amount of speculation from the NZ camp surrounds Sean Finning's victory, Roulston was forced to spend last Monday in hospital on a drip as treatment for severe dehydration.
"He's had a whole heap of tests but hasn't got the results back," said New Zealand's high performance manager Michael Flynn to Fairfax NZ. "All he knows is that he's still feeling terrible."
Last Friday, shortly after the conclusion of the men's points race in Melbourne, TV cycling commentator Phil Liggett suggested there may have been a judging mistake that led to Finning being awarded more points than he deserved. Liggett believed Finning was credited with a lap that should have instead gone to his team-mate Peter Dawson, however Oceania cycling president and judge on the night, Ray Godkin, dismissed the claim.
"As far as I'm concerned it's done and dusted," Godkin said. "We spoke about it on the night when someone asked me 'Is that Dawson?' and I said: 'No, it's Finning'. I remember the circumstances and I made the count correctly. It was definitely Finning, he took six laps."
Furthermore, since head track coach Terry Gyde obtained a copy of the race and passed the video onto Roulston, no protest has been lodged by the New Zealand camp.
