Athletics: Whanganui athletes gear up for big year in 2024

Former Whanganui athlete Iain Rattray (blue on the left), now a leading Masters athlete from Hamilton, and world record-setting Masters runner Sally Gibbs lead out the record field at the Whanganui parkrun. Photo / Nico Smit

New Year is a time for looking back and also forward. Over the next two weeks, I will do both. As Oprah Winfrey said about New Year, “Cheers to a new year and another chance to get it right.”

We got much right last year in a busy athletics year, but we are aware there is scope for improvement that I will also reflect on in subsequent weeks.

The year ended on a high for the Whanganui parkrun with a record number of participants on December 23 at the 156th edition. There were 120 participants supported by 13 volunteers, breaking the previous best of 84. A week later, on the final Saturday of the year, there were 109, and on the first Saturday of the new year a total of 119. At 8am on New Year’s Day, another 66 celebrated an early New Year with a special additional run.

The weekly event has come of age and, as with other runs in New Zealand, the event has a growing popularity. The Whanganui parkrun along the attractive riverbank walkway starts at 8am every Saturday opposite 164a Taupō Quay.

The local track and field season starts on Tuesday, January 16. The weekly Tuesday programme starts at 6.45pm, and the full syllabus is on the Athletics Wanganui website. A timed programme is posted on the website the previous weekend. The opening is just four days before the first major open meeting in the region, the Potts Classic in Hastings on Saturday, January 20.

The Potts Classic is the first of the three North Island Classic Meets with our own Pak‘nSave Classic a week later at Cooks Gardens on Saturday, January 27, the 62nd anniversary of the famous Peter Snell world record mile set on January 27, 1962. Fittingly, the Classic includes the Athletics New Zealand Mile Championship. New Zealand‘s top miler, Sam Tanner, who holds the fourth-fastest Cooks Gardens mile, has said the Cooks Classic is a target event for him as he prepares for the Paris Olympics this year. Tanner has high Olympic goals in a year in which he hopes to leapfrog the great John Walker to top the New Zealand all-time mile list.

The Lower North Island Classic series ends on Friday, February 2, at Wellington’s Newtown Park with the 20th Anniversary Team Ledger Harcourts Capital Classic.

Newtown is the venue for this year’s Athletics New Zealand track and field championships, which have special significance in an Olympic year, on the weekend of March 14-17. The Manawatū/Whanganui Championships, vital for athletes wishing to represent the centre at the national championships, will again be held in conjunction with Palmerston North and Whanganui February club nights. Whanganui hosts on Tuesday, February 13, and Palmerston North on Tuesday, February 20.

The Whanganui Secondary Schools champs are on Tuesday, March 12. Sadly, the early Easter dates and the subsequent squeeze on March dates have meant the schools championships are only a couple of days before the Athletics New Zealand championships, and that might affect the choice of events of the small group of nationally ranked athletes. A team from Whanganui schools will be selected to compete at the North Island Schools in Palmerston North on April 6-7, the weekend after Easter.

A small group of younger Whanganui athletes have already been in action at the North Island Colgate Games at Mt Smart in Auckland, gaining invaluable experience from their trip north.

Isla Jones returned with two medals, a good reward for her application and determination to have a go at a wide range of events, demonstrated at our weekly club nights. Jones won a silver in the 14-year grade in 80m hurdles and, although fourth across the line, she was the second North Islander with visiting athletes from the South Island and Little Athletics Victoria second and third respectively. Jones ran a personal best 13.58 to qualify and improved further to run 13.27 in the final. She also set a personal best over 200m, narrowly failing to progress from the semifinal. Jones won her second North Island medal with bronze in the high jump. Although seventh in the competition, because there were two Australians and a South Islander ahead of her, she was the third North Islander.

James McGregor set an impressive personal best of 56.74 over 400m. With two Victorians taking first and second and a Christchurch athlete fourth, McGregor secured a North Island bronze in the final (56.94).

Jamie Munro gained huge experience, finishing one place shy of a spot in the final in the hurdles and 200m, and was 10th in the 100m in the 12-year-old grade.