Athletics: Potts Classic attracts classy middle-distance field

STAR ACT: Nick Willis wins the Allan Potts Memorial 800m at last year's Potts Classic from runner-up Brad Mathas (left) and Australian Craig Huffer. PHOTO/Hastings Athletics Club

HAWKE'S BAY fans will be in for a treat next month when some of New Zealand and Australia's top track-and-field athletes will descend on Hastings.

Rio Olympian and reigning World University 800m champion Angie Petty (nee Smidt) will be back to defend her title in the feature race, the Sylvia Potts Memorial Women's 800m, at the annual Allan and Sylvia Potts Memorial Classic on Saturday, January 14.

The winner will receive a Potts trust silver bowl while prizemoney incentives will be up for grab for runners breaking 2:01.00, courtesy of sponsors Andrew Spence Pharmacy and Sylvia's brother, John Oxenham.

The Potts trust presents a silver platter to the winner of the Allan Potts Memorial Men's 800m event, which Tumu ITM sponsors. Its incentive time is 1:48.22, a PB that Allan Potts-coached Hamish Christensen established.

Fans will hope to see the two-minute barrier broken in the women's race, if Petty's PB of 1:59.06 set in Korea is anything to go by.

Favouritism for the men's 800m lies with Australian record-holder Alex Rowe whose 1:44.40 PB sits just outside Olympic champion Peter Snell's New Zealand record 1:44.3, still standing from the 1960s.

Rowe is one of a party of nine Australian athletes Lisa Verstraten has mustered in making the trip for the New Zealand Classic Series. Verstraten is in her third year as manager.

Bay entrepreneur and philanthropist Sir Graeme Avery's Sileni Estates sponsor the Australian athletes who will go on from Hastings to compete in Wanganui's Cook's Gardens Classic on Tuesday, January 17, and Wellington's Capital Classic on Friday, January 20.

Olympic interest will not be confined to Petty - Nick Willis will be on hand. His CV is well known - bronze in the 1500m at the Rio Olympics, silver in Beijing and bronze at the Portland World Indoors in Oregon this year.

While not competing in Hastings, Willis will sign autographs or may even be open to selfies for the digital generation.

Bay elites Eric Speakman and Laura Nagel will race in the men's and women's 5000m races.

Recently back from his athletics scholarship to Stoneybrook University, Speakman will be out to break Olympic marathon runner Rex Wilson's Hawke's Bay record of 13:43.10 set in 1982.

Nagel, who recently returned from Providence University in the US, is the NZ women's 10,000 road race and NZ women's crosscountry titleholder.

The 5000m events at the Potts classic are selection races for the New Zealand team to the World Crosscountry Championship.

Classic race director Richard Potts says Nagel has the possibility of going to the world champs if she performs well here.

When the sprinters come out to strut their stuff there will be a match up of at least two of New Zealand's young female stars - Georgia Hulls, of Hastings, and Zoe Hobbs.

Hulls, the reigning Hawke's Bay secondary schools' female athlete of the year and Australian U18 100m and 200m titleholder, ran the 100m and 200m at the World Juniors this year.

She reached the semifinal of the 200m. She holds an 11.78 PB for the 100 and 23.78 for the 200.

Hobbs holds a startling 11.53 time as a schoolgirl, fourth best of all time among NZ senior women. Hobbs was Hulls' conqueror over 100m at last year's NZ secondary school champs in Timaru.

Potts may have more announcements to come for what promises to be a humdinger of a meeting.