Preston is on our roll of honour at Cooks Gardens by joining the track’s sub-four-minute-milers. The Whanganui connection to the race in Germany at the weekend does not end there as former Whanganui athlete Brad Mathas finished second to Preston.
Thirty-year-old Melbourne-based Mathas remains a Whanganui Club member and has, in his illustrious career, won eight New Zealand 800m titles. Mathas ran his second fastest-ever 800m in Germany, clocking 1m 45.80s, only five one-hundredths of a second shy of his best.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Beamish, another former Whanganui athlete and current club member, came tantalisingly close to adding the New Zealand mile record to his 5000m and steeplechase records.
In one of the strongest mile fields ever assembled for the Bowerman Mile in Eugene, Oregon, Beamish finished eighth in 3m 49.09s, missing Walker’s record by only .01s. This comes at a good time as Beamish prepares for the Olympic steeplechase.
Perhaps typically of many New Zealanders, one person remarked he was last (not so as there were 14 finishers) and another said Beamish did not go with the pace.
There might be some truth in the latter but the pace was very fast and, in his first major outdoor race of the summer on the build-up for the Olympic 3000m steeplechase, was only a few seconds behind winner Josh Kerr, who broke the long-standing Steve Cram UK record.
On yet another continent, in Potchefstroom in South Africa, 18-year-old triple jumper Ethan Olivier became the first New Zealander to jump 17m with a 17.01m jump setting New Zealand records at Senior, Under-20 and Under-19 level. His brother Welre was second with 16.26m.
The two New Zealand records and Beamish’s mile effort in the lead-up to the Paris Olympics should put a smile on the faces of two other former Whanganui athletes who are key members of our Olympic support team, high-performance director Scott Newman and high-performance athletics support manager Kat Austin.
It is great to see athletes coming into top form for the Olympic Games, which start on July 26.
The small New Zealand team of five Para athletes made a magnificent start to Olympics year by returning from the World Para Athletics Championships in Kobe with eight medals – golds for William Stedman and Danielle Aitchison, silvers from Aitchison, Stedman, Holly Robinson and Anna Grimaldi and bronzes from Grimaldi and Mitch Joynt.
These performances included a world record, five New Zealand records and three Oceania records.
There was further good news from the US with the qualification for the NCAA finals by Lexi Maples in the hammer. Maples went to North Dakota with a personal best of 59.81m and has since improved to 64.97m.
Last weekend she qualified for the prestigious Division 1 finals to be held in Eugene, Oregon, on June 5-8. Only 24 in field events gain selection and this is a fitting climax to her first season in the US, which has seen her 10 best-ever throws, all over 60m.
Closer to home, our three Whanganui athletes leave for Fiji on Friday for next week’s Oceania Championships. I saw our youngest, 15-year-old Juliet McKinlay, in her final javelin session with coach Richard Drabczynski, followed by her weights session with Gil Barnitt. A clearly excited McKinlay looked to be in good form.
Our 400m hurdler Jonathan Maples has come back from the heat of Okinawa in excellent form, especially in terms of technique and speed. Walker Lucas Martin, although at times facing poor weather in Christchurch, is always thorough in terms of preparation.
We wish all three well in their international debut next week.
