Athletics: Hawke’s Bay runner smashes 39-year-old NZ steeples record

Geordie Beamish (number 879) in university colours breaking a 5000 metres indoor record in December 2021. PHOTO / Jared Lautenslager

Havelock North runner Geordie Beamish has rocketed further into 2024 Olympic Games reckoning by breaking a New Zealand and Oceania 3000 metres steeplechase record that had stood for 39 years.

The 26-year-old ran the race in eight minutes 13.26 seconds as he finished fifth at the Monaco Diamond League meeting on Friday, lopping almost 0.8 seconds from the previous record of 8m 14.05s set by Otago runner Peter Renner at Koblenz, German, in August 1984, a fortnight after finishing 11th in the Los Angeles Olympic Games final.

“It feels good to finally get it done,” Beamish said at an interview immediately after the race, possibly his last before running the 5000 metres at the 2023 World Athletics Championships, being held in Budapest, Hungary, on August 19-27.

But he is considering doing a 1500m race in about two weeks’ time - “if I think I need it”, and preferably driving distance from his current base in Germany.

He was one of four in the first five to post personal bests, including the winner Kenyan Simon Kiprop Koech, who crossed the line in 8m 4.19s.

The times stand Koech third in the 2023 World Athletics rankings and Beamish, who won the New Zealand Under-18 2000m steeplechase title in 2013 at the age of 16, is now ranked No 15 for the Senior event.

He ran the 5000m for New Zealand at last year’s World Championship in Oregon, USA and didn’t graduate from the heats, but a few weeks later was sixth at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games.

It’s the fifth New Zealand record for Beamish, son of Simon and Josi Beamish. He attended Havelock North Primary School, Hereworth School and Lindisfarne College in Hawke’s Bay, before heading for Whanganui Collegiate and the expert mentorship of former Commonwealth Games Scotland runner Alec McNab.

With all four other records set in the United States, he holds New Zealand indoor records at 3000m and 5000m, and outdoor records at 3000m on the track and 5km on the road.

The winner of the national Junior 1500m finals in both 2014 and 2015, his next possible 1500m race before the World Championships is also backed by form, having a personal best of 3m 36.53s run in the US 16 months ago, ranking him No 12 on the New Zealand all-time list, which is headed by the record of 3:29.66 3m 29.66s, run by Nick Willis on the Monaco track in 2015 and now being challenged by rising star Samuel Tanner, who ran 3m 31.24s in Poland on July 16.

Beamish, who also ran a personal best mile (1609m) of 3m 55.20s in the US in February this year, was among the already-qualified athletes named in April in a prospective New Zealand squad of 18 for the World Championship, along with other representatives and looming international medal prospects in middle-distance running and sprints on the track, and jumping and throwing events in the field.

Fellow Hawke’s Bay athlete Georgia Hulls, who has been based at the AUT Millennium Institute in the East Coast Bays region of Auckland’s North Shore, left on Friday for a second World Championship 200m bid.

She didn’t get out of the heats last year, but with 2024 Olympics selection will be looking for the big breakthrough, with maybe also a point to prove after running a personal best 22.84s in Christchurch in February, but finishing second as Canterbury sprinter Rosie Elliott set a new national record of 22.81s.

Such a time would probably have been good enough for the now 25-year-old to qualify for the semifinals last year in Oregon, where she was second in her heat at 23.46s.

Jamaican Shericka Jackson won the Oregon final in 21.45s, just 0.11s outside the World record of 21.34s run by now-late US idol Florence “Flo Jo” Griffith-Joyner in winning the 1988 Olympic Games gold medal in Seoul.

Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 50 years of journalism experience in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.