Sam Ruthe (black singlet) running a world-best 300m for a 15-year-old in November. Photo / Rob Rickerby, ACA Athletics
Sam Ruthe (black singlet) running a world-best 300m for a 15-year-old in November. Photo / Rob Rickerby, ACA Athletics
Two young athletes of the moment, including a world-record breaker, have confirmed starts at the Allan and Sylvia Potts Class track and field meeting at the Mitre 10 Regional Sports Park in Hastings on Saturday.
Sam Ruthe (black singlet) running a world-best 3000m for a 15-year-old in November. Now with an age-group world-best mile under the belt, run in Whanganui last weekend, he will run the 3000m at the Potts Classic in Hastings on Saturday. Photo / Rob Rickerby, ACA Athletics
Now heading the drawcards is 15-year-old Bay of Plenty runner Sam Ruthe, who at Whanganui’sCooks Garden last weekend ran the mile in 4m 1.7s, 3.7 seconds faster than the known world best for the age group, having in November in Auckland ran an age-group world record 3000m in 8m 9.68s.
Meeting organiser Richard Potts said Ruthe will run in the men’s New Zealand 3000m, in Hastings, in a strong field including father Ben Ruthe.
Another runner is 20-year-old Auckland sensation Lex Revell-Lewis, who on Wednesday night in Newtown, Wellington, ran the 400m in 46.11s, just two-hundredth outside the New Zealand record set 23 years ago.
In Hastings he’ll run the 200m in a field that includes 18-year-old Hawke’s Bay hopeful Rylan Noome.
It will also be a big night for Hastings Athletics Club shotputter Nick Palmer, who last year hurled the shot past 20 metres for the first time. The distance saw Palmer, now based in Canterbury, fall agonisingly short of joining world-ranked Kiwis Tom Walsh and Jacko Gill at the Olympic Games in Paris.
Nick Palmer, from Hastings but based in Christchurch, pictured winning the shot put at the Potts Classic in Hastings in 2023. Back at the classic on Saturday he'll start a bid for a World Championships qualifying mark. Photo / NZME
The 24-year-old, who now trains near-daily with Walsh in Christchurch, is this summer targeting a 21.5m qualifying mark for the World Championships in Tokyo in September.
Another Hawke’s Bay interest will be in the performances of multiple-titles-winner and Auckland-based 32-year-old former Taradale High School student Laura Nagel, who is set to run the women’s 3000m championship event and the 800m just 35 minutes apart.
Olympic Games pole vaulter Eliza McCartney will be at the meeting – not competing but available during the night for autograph-signing.
With only selected carded, world-ranking points on the programme, among those who won’t be competing is South Africa-born Canterbury sprinter Tiaan Whelpton, who darted a World Indoor Championships qualifying 6.5 seconds New Zealand record 60m in Canberra last weekend.
The return to Hastings would have had some appeal if it was carded event, for in 2022 he ran a personal-best 100m of 10.18 at the Potts Classic and repeated the time at the event a year later.
Field events start at 2pm, and track events at 5pm, with admission by gold donation to the Cancer Society.
Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 51 years of journalism experience, 41 of them in Hawke’s Bay, in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.
