Just Champion

And this time it is to be staged at the new multi-million pounds Newport Velodrome later this year.

Hot on the heels of Newport landing the Argus-sponsored National Road Race Championships, which will take place in just over a fortnight on the roads east of the city, plus last year's highly-successful National Criterium Championships comes a stage of the European Champ-ionships series.

The European event will form the centrepiece of the Velo-drome's opening night on November 14.

Details of it are being kept under wraps at present but, although the Euro competition will not be a full-blown multi-discipline championships, it will be a fast and furious single discipline event.

Welsh Cycling Union chairman Bill Owen said: "It's hugely exciting. Let's hope it will be the first of bigger things to come.

"What we are trying to do at the Velodrome is build a new supporter base (for the sport). The opening night, other than this championship event, will be such as to appeal to the public."

And the European competition could be the sprint discipline, the fastest of all cycling track competitions.

Owen, plus other senior officials from the Welsh Cycling Union and leading riders, including the incredible Welsh star Nicole Cooke, were at the Celtic Manor yesterday to officially launch the 2003 National Road Race Championships.

Cooke, the Commonwealth Games gold medallist, National Road Race Championships title holder and currently leading the elite World Cup Series, believes that having the cream of British cyclists in Gwent can only push back the boundaries of cycling here.

Cooke, now based in Venice, Italy, but whose family live at Wick near Bridgend, said:

"Julian Winn (of Abergavenny) and myself are the current British champions and it's a fantastic opportunity for both of us to defend our titles on home ground.

"The Welsh Cycling Union have done an awful lot to move cycling forward in Wales and this shows that it is getting noticed."