Kiwi runner Nick Willis hopes to add to an already impressive trophy cabinet at a Christchurch athletics meeting this week, but his biggest prize is in the mail.

The Olympic and Commonwealth Games medallist is in Christchurch for an international track and field event at Queen Elizabeth II Park on Thursday.

Willis said he was excited to be competing in a Christchurch event.

"It's great to have international-quality races back in New Zealand," he said. "Once I got to this level, I really wanted the opportunity to do it in front of my home fans."

Willis did not compete in the Christchurch event last year after a hip injury ruled him out of most of the 2009 season.

His recovery was boosted by news that his 2008 1500-metres Olympic bronze medal was being upgraded to silver after Beijing winner Rashid Ramzi failed a drugs test.

Willis said the silver medal was "in the mail as we speak".

Click here to read the full article on Stuff.co.nz

The event’s star is undoubtedly Olympic 1500m silver medallist Nick Willis, who has publicly stated his goal in Delhi this year is to not only defend his Commonwealth 1500m crown, but to emulate the legendary Peter Snell and add the 800m crown as well.  [Snell won the imperial equivalents, the half-mile and mile, at the Empire Games in Perth in 1962].

Aiming to throw a spanner in the works at Willis’ home track meet will be top Australians Jeff Riseley and Jeremy Roff, who unexpectedly claimed the scalps of Willis and Kenya’s Olympic gold medallist Asbel Kiprop in the 1500m race at the Melbourne Grand Prix 10 days ago.  Willis said when he flew into Christchurch today “That was a bit of a shock – I’ll definitely be out for some revenge on Thursday”. With Irish 800-1500 champion David Campbell, 4-times Australian champion Nick Bromley, and Canadian Geoff Harris also in the field, there are six athletes with personal bests of 1min47sec or faster – the strongest field since Auckland 1990, when British middle distance legend Sebastian Coe, in the twilight of his career, finished 6^th in 1min47.24s. 

Meet Director Craig Motley said “This is a phenomenal field to come together for a meet of this scale, and we are expecting to see some pretty fast times”.  Willis and Riseley in particular should be very evenly matched – their personal bests are just 6/100ths of a second different from each other, and both are just over a second outside Peter Snell’s New Zealand record, set when he smashed the world record at Lancaster Park in 1962. 

Also competing in the discus event at the meet will be former world champion and twice Commonwealth champion Beatrice Faumuina, against the current world champion Dani Samuels.

Tickets are on sale at QEII Stadium now, and at the gate on the night. Adults are $12, children 12 & under $6, and under-5's are free.  Premium allocated Gold Seating is $20.  The international section of the programme starts at 6.30pm - go to www.internationaltrackmeet.co.nz for more details.

New Zealand athletes produced a mixture of results at the Melbourne Track Classic at Olympic Park last night.
Throwers Stuart Farquhar (2nd Javelin) and Valerie Vili (1st Shot) performed well on a warm night in Melbourne with Farquhar only narrowly losing to 2007 World Champion Tero Pitkamaki of Finland by 6cm and Vili again throwing over 20m and winning by over 4m.
In the running events Adrian Blincoe was the standout with a 13:26 in the 5000m, under the 13:30 standard for the Commonwealth Games and only six seconds behind British star Andy Baddeley with Anna Smythe running well in the 100m to post 11.62 for third. 

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Full Results - IAAF

200 Metres - Men Wind: -0.1 m/s 
1 Davies , Matt AUS 20.83 
2 Lawal , Bola Gee NGR 20.91 
3 Johnson , Patrick AUS 21.11
4 Martin , Rodney USA 21.27 
5 Sheehy , Keith AUS 21.36 
6 Martin , Daniel AUS 21.42 
7 Groth , Jacob AUS 21.44 
8 Thumath , Jeffery NZL 21.67

400 Metres - Men Race 2 
1 Boudrie , Andrew AUS 47.15 
2 Burke , David AUS 47.69 
3 Jordan , Alex NZL 47.70 
4 Bee , Joel AUS 47.72 
5 Beck , Alexander AUS 47.79 
6 Burch , Scott NZL 48.59 
7 Fitzpatrick , Simon AUS 48.86 
8 Wurm , Ollie AUS 50.36

Vili’s shot put competition is timed for 8.50pm.

Murray McKinnon

Communications Advisor

Athletics New Zealand

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Melbourne offers a smorgasbord of delights – PREVIEW – IAAF World Challenge

Melbourne, Australia – Such is the quality of the entry list it’s hard to forecast the likely highlight of Thursday night’s Melbourne Track Classic (4), which is as it should be for the opening meeting of theIAAF World Challenge series.

Steve Hooker, Dani Samuels and Valerie Vili come to Melbourne as reigning World champions (Hooker and Vili as Olympic champions, too) but face only token opposition in their events. Asbel Kiprop and Nick Willis, the Beijing Olympic gold and silver medallists at 1500 metres face each other for the first time since, and must also contend with a group of up-and-coming Australians.

David Rudisha, whose 1:42.01 in Rieti last year made him the fourth-fastest man ever over 800 metres, is predicting a 1:43 clocking in Melbourne, a prediction that has been lost somewhat in the hype surrounding the 1500.

Besides Vili and Samuels, the field also boasts a strong javelin contest between Finland’s 2007 World champion Tero Pitkämäki and Australia’s Beijing sixth placegetter Jarrod Bannister.

Speaking at the John Landy Lunch to launch the Melbourne meeting, Pitkämäki suggested he would be after a performance in the 85-90 metre range. Bannister, who was next in line to comment, added with a straight face that he would be shooting for something between 86 and 91.

And the forecast is for a warm day, which should favour the explosive events but cool off enough into the evening to please the middle-distance athletes, too.

Suffice to say, that whoever comes up with the outstanding performance of the Melbourne Track Classic will have to go some indeed.

By Len Johnson

Click here to read this article in full on IAAF.org

Sweet taste of McEvedy success

Beaming with pride, St Pat's Town athletics captain Yarride Rosario rated the McEvedy Shield win as his career highlight.

Rosario, 16, the top-ranked under-17 sprinter in the country, said his school's pumped-up victory yesterday, over bigger cross-town rival Wellington College in the prestigious schoolboys' athletics competition, was by far his sweetest moment.

And for Rosario there were significant comparisons to make. Lifting the historic shield on the Newtown Park track meant more than wearing the silver fern or winning a national secondary schools sprint title. "It's amazing. I wish I could live this moment every day of my life," said Rosario, after he was swamped by frenzied St Pat's Town boys at the finish of the senior 4x100m relay.

"Especially winning that last race. That was indescribable."

St Pat's Town beat Wellington College by 185 points to 172, with St Pat's Silverstream and Rongotai well off the pace. Rosario said the margin was too close to call until the last of the four relays.

After claiming the senior sprint double earlier in the day, he anchored the St Pat's senior 4x100m team in 43.47sec to seal the satisfying victory.

"Before the relays it was touch and go. I didn't want to believe we had it until the last race," he said.

By Penny Miles
Click here to read this article in full on Stuff.co.nz

St Pats take McEvedy Shield

St Patrick's College athletes have sprinted away with the coveted McEvedy Shield, snatching the prestigious schoolboys' athletics competition late in the day from defender Wellington College.

"For a school our size it's an incredible feat really," St Pat's coach Leigh Lidstone said yesterday. "We've taken on a school twice our size and won."

For most of the day, the shield was within the grasp of both schools. Defending champions Wellington, with 1500 pupils, were strong in the field while St Pat's Town, with 700, dominated on the track through sprint ace and senior captain Yarride Rosario.

But as the haka and chants rang out around Wellington's Newtown Park yesterday afternoon, St Pat's grabbed the victory by 15 points in the final relays. Wellington's challenge fell flat with disqualification in two races because of baton blunders.

Lidstone said St Pat's had set the tone for the Catholic boys' 17th win with a mass in the school chapel before the competition. They were also motivated by a close loss last year, and believed they could do it after lifting the shield in 2008.

While the boys dedicated long hours in training, Lidstone said the support staff's roles were all- consuming too. "For someone like me it's all lunchtimes, Saturday mornings and two times after school each week, so it's very satisfying."

Rosario, St Pat's athletics captain and seventh-form pupil, expected to celebrate into the night.

By Penny Miles
Click here to read this article in full on Stuff.co.nz

Kim Smith set a new New Zealand record of 1:07:55 at the Mardi Gras Half Marathon in New Orleans, Louisiana. She lead almost the entire race as she attempted to break away from eventual winner Ethiopian Berhane Adere (1:07:52). After a fast start the leaders passed the 5km and 10km splits in 15:48 and 31:47, faster than any other Kiwi Woman over those distances in more than a year.
Next up for Smith is the London Marathon on the 25th of April 2010.

Thirteen Kiwi athletes competed in events at the Sydney leg of the Australian GP series on the 27th of February.
Valerie Vili again showed great early season form with a dominant win in the Women's Shot with a Put of 20.57m. Vili improved on her winning performance from the same meet last year but will be up against stiff competition when she meets Ostapchuk (21.70m Indoors in 2010) at the World Indoor Champs in March.
Other athletes to perform well include Carl van der Speck (10.60) in the 100m, James Dol,phin (20.83) in the 200m, Adrian Blincoe (3:38) in the 1500m and Stuart Farquhar (79.80m) in the Javelin.

Full Results

From the IAAF:

Vili, perhaps the most dominant female athlete in any event today, was colossal in blasting the iron orb 20.57m which improved her own meet record of 20.09m set only last year. Even without the stimulation of any serious opponents, Vili’s mark approached the Australian All-Comers Record of 20.69m set by Natalya Lisovskaya at the IAAF World Cup in Canberra in 1985.

“I’m pretty happy. It’s my second throw for the season. There is nobody to chase here but you want to put on a good show for the crowd so I’m pretty happy,” Vili said. But she knows the tension will rise when she gets to Doha to face Nadzeya Ostapchuk, the Belorussian who leads the world with her put of 21.70m indoors earlier in February.

Click here to read the full article on IAAF.org

Athletics NZ has released the selection policies for the two major IAAF World Championships to be held in 2011.
The World XC selection policy for the Championships to be held in Spain on the 20th of March 2011 appears relatively unchanged from the 2010 policy and shows a commitment to the Trial system re-introduced in 2010 and to the underlying philosophy of 'team selection'. Unfortunately the policy still fails to allow for qualifying performances to be achieved during the US or European Outdoor seasons which significantly impacts on those athletes who are not based in NZ and who are unable to travel to the Southern Hemishpere during the NZ Summer. This remains a self-funded event.
 
2011 World XC Selection Policy

The World Athletics selection policy for the Championships to be held in Korea in August and September 2011 also appears relatively unchanged from recent similar policies. The focus is still clearly aimed at selecting only those athletes who have demonstrated the ability to finish in the Top 16 places, except in cases where the athlete is considered to have the potential to develop into a Top 16 athlete in future Championships. Unfortunately this policy still includes the exclusion section which allows the selection panel to deny selection to an athlete who has past poor performances, but outlines no criteria by which these athletes will be informed of these poor performance assessments at the time of the performances. If this section remains in future policies it needs to be seriously revised to close the loop-holes which were identified by the Sports Tribunal in 2008. This is a self-funded event, although it would be expected that those athletes who meet qualifying standards would have access to funding through their individual athlete agreements with the HP department.

2011 World Outdoor Champs Selection Policy

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