Keeping his eyes on the goal, world junior 1500m hopeful Karsen Vesty at the William Nelson Athletics Precinct track in Hastings. Photo / Paul Taylor
Keeping his eyes on the goal, world junior 1500m hopeful Karsen Vesty at the William Nelson Athletics Precinct track in Hastings. Photo / Paul Taylor
Teenaged Hawke's Bay runner Karsen Vesty has been given a crack at taking on some of the best young athletes on the globe with selection to the World Junior Athletics Championships in August.
At a time when New Zealand is displaying possibly its greatest depth yet in aspiring international-quality running, the 17-year-old Havelock North High School student was one of three who had run the 1500m qualifying time required to be eligible for the championships in Colombia.
But he was only third in line, and with no country allowed more than two competitors an event, was selected initially as the reserve.
The change came when 1500m selection and Auckland runner James Harding opted to focus instead on the 800m, having last month broken a national under-19 800m record held by former Napier runner Jason Stewart for 22 years.
Trained in Hastings by Richard Potts, who still holds the New Zealand Secondary Schools Championship senior boys 1500m record with a time of 3min 46.92sec run in 1989, Vesty burst into contention by improving his best for the distance by almost 14 seconds during the 2021-22 season.
It started with a previous best of 4min 2sec, having been run in Hamilton in February last year.
Havelock North High School runner Karsen Vesty, in training for his World Junior Athletics Championship bid in Colombia in August. Photo / Paul Taylor
He won the national under-20 title in a PB 3min 54.81sec at Hastings' William Nelson Athletics Precinct Mitre 10 Regional Sports Park track on March 4, and knocked another six seconds off with the qualifying time of 3min 48.26sec in an all-but-solo run at a Hastings Athletics Club night on March 22.
He'd known he'd have to do just under 60 seconds for the last 400m, and snuck inside the qualifying time by 0.24sec.
It was what may be becoming classic Vesty determination to reach a goal, something he'd shown spectacularly four years ago when second in the national secondary schools junior orienteering championship in Christchurch, with one arm in a cast since a cycling accident a fortnight earlier.
It's not hard to see where the ethic comes from, with father Brendon Vesty having been a professional road cyclist with numerous multiple-days tours under his belt in New Zealand, Australia, the US, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Africa.
The teenager Vesty had tried rugby, cricket and other sports as a youngster, but decided to take running more seriously progressing into high school.
He ran in the national secondary schools championships junior grade without particular success, and the senior years were wiped out with the cancellation of the championships in 2020 and last year.
Coach Potts said Vesty trained hard through the summer, and stepping up the regime had "paid off".
"He's one of those ones that's going to do the work and does everything he's asked," he said.
The email advising Vesty of his selection came "out of the blue" a fortnight ago, meaning instant revision of the programme for the next few months.
He'll still run the New Zealand Secondary Schools cross-country championships in Nelson in June, but will settle into six weeks of specific training for the 1500m before leaving with the 12-strong New Zealand team for a pre-championships camp in Miami in mid-July, thus missing the national cross-country championships he was to have contested in August.
The 2021 World Championships 1500m final in Nairobi was won in 3min 37.24sec, but Vesty's current PB time would have been good enough for sixth in qualifying.
