Masterton athlete Vicky Paine exceeded all expectations in winning two silver medals at the Oceania track and field championships which drew to a close in Saipan over the weekend. Competing in the women's 18yrs grade, Paine finished runner-up in both the 200m and 400m grand finals after earlier winning her heats. Paine'stime of 26.40secs in placing second behind Fiji's outstanding Paulini Korowaqa in the 200m final represented a huge improvement on her previous personal best time of 26.98secs. And she was the closest of seconds in the 400m final, clocking 57.83secs compared to the winner's 57.81secs. Coach Mark Harris freely concedes that while he always considered Paine a medal hope in the 400m at least her efforts in Saipan were better than he had ever anticipated. Considering that training conditions in Masterton at this time of the year were anything but ideal he had envisaged her registering a 27secs 200m and a 58.05secs 400m and he was "blown away" by the times she actually recorded. "She's gone huge, absolutely huge," Harris said of Paine. "It's a tough ask to go from the cold of Masterton to the heat of Saipan and perform to anything like your best but she's obviously coped fantastically well." Harris said he and Paine had been working on some specific techniques to enhance her 200m performance and they may well have played a part in her "astonishing" improvement in time there. He also noted that while her 400m time was not quite up to her pb of 57.62secs her training for that event had been limited to the degree she had only two serious hit outs over the distance in the lead-up to the final. "To run the time she did with the preparation she had & just imagine what she might have done with another couple of runs under her belt," Harris said.
