Athletics: Faumuina disappointed with title-winning form

The winning of another national women's discus title left Beatrice Faumuina with mixed feelings at best on the first day of the New Zealand track and field championships in Christchurch yesterday.

It was virtually a foregone conclusion that she should win her 17th title in 18 years of competition at national level - Faumuina was injured in 2001 - but after the rejuvenated form she has shown this summer, her winning hurl of 57.54m was a slight under-achievement.

Only a week ago at the same venue - QEII Park - Faumuina bettered the 60m mark with relative ease. On that occasion she was in competition against world champion Dani Samuels, of Australia.

Like most of her previous outings at the nationals, Faumuina was throwing 25m further than her New Zealand rivals and the lack of sting showed in her performance.

"It was brilliant to have Dani Samuels here last week - to have that competition there," she said.

"To be honest, I'm a little bit disappointed. But, in hindsight of the whole season, we've achieved what we wanted. We achieved the 56m to qualify for the Commonwealth Games, which is what we wanted and I've thought my overall performances have improved a lot more than I'd done for the last three or four years."

Faumuina has beaten the Games qualifying mark every time she has been in competition during the home summer and she looks forward to building up for New Delhi in October.

If there was a special medal for longevity, no-one could rival Wellingtonian Philip Jensen, who won the men's hammer throw 22 years after he'd won his first title in the same event. The title was Jensen's 16th national title success. His 62.53m was more than 10m further than second-placed Aucklander Damian Smuts.

Sprinter Carl Van Der Speck, romped down the straight to easily retain his 100m title and his face beamed when he realised he'd run a personal best of 10.45 seconds.

"My previous best was 10.50sec - I'm delighted," he said. "I could have got away to a better start," he said but, once he opened up a couple of metres break by the 50m mark, "it was just a matter of holding it".

- NZPA