Athletics: Whanganui connections performing well in Europe ahead of world champs

Pole vaulter Eliza McCartney is on the comeback trail. Photo / Alisha Lovrich, Athletics NZ

COMMENT

New Zealand athletes have been producing some excellent performances in Europe as they prepare for next month’s World Athletics Championships in Budapest.

I envy Athletics Club and former Whanganui Collegiate coach colleague Richard Drabczynski, who has tickets for those championships and will be at every session. I will be back in New Zealand by then but am lucky enough to have tickets for the London Diamond League Meeting on July 23 where, hopefully, there will be leading New Zealand athletes in action.

The London meet, following last year’s highly successful Commonwealth Games in Birmingham (which I was fortunate to attend), returns to the 2012 Olympic Stadium. The stadium was also the venue for the World Championships in 2017 and is now the home of West Ham United Football Club. In the promotion for the event, British Athletics advertises “one session of spine-tingling, heart-grabbing, chest-thumping action evoking memories of 2012 and 2017″. I am certainly looking forward to it and I know that, as in Birmingham last year, I can expect a superbly and professionally presented event. With all the top seats sold, it is possible the 60,000-seat stadium will be sold out.

While there are no guarantees that at this elite level all our athletes listed will be invited to compete, it is likely there will be a strong New Zealand presence in London of athletes who have also thrilled us at Cooks Gardens.

The shot should see the return of Jacko Gill and Tom Walsh in head-to-head competition. Gill holds the Cooks stadium record but did not compete in this year’s Pak’nSave Cooks Classic, where Walsh came within centimetres of that record. A few weeks later in Wellington, Gill broke Walsh’s long run of New Zealand titles. Walsh won the Commonwealth Games with Gill second last year, with Walsh reaching a season’s best of 22.26m. On this year’s northern hemisphere campaign, Walsh has produced a calendar year best (22.22) and with only a month until Budapest, both will be looking for big confidence-lifting performances in London.

It is many years since a young Eliza McCartney competed in Whanganui. She won the New Zealand Schools title at Cooks in 2014 and holds the stadium record as a 17-year-old in the same year at the Cooks Classic. McCartney, who so dramatically took Olympic bronze back in 2016, has had a long battle with injury, starting in Birmingham in 2018 when she landed heavily on the runway battling a headwind in warm-up. It has been a hard road to come back but come back she has. Her poles arrived after the start of competition in Barcelona last weekend when McCartney set a meet record with an automatic worlds qualifier of 4.73. McCartney has one further Whanganui connection through her father William, who was a leading high jumper while at Whanganui Collegiate School and was the second Collegiate high jumper to clear 6 feet (1.83m).

Sam Tanner is no stranger to Whanganui. He was sixth in last year’s Commonwealth Games 1500m, where he stepped up and demonstrated he can match it with world-class athletes. He ran his personal best last year with an outstanding 3:31.34. He is clearly coming into form, running 3:32.15 for his second-fastest effort at the June 30 Atletissma Meet in Lausanne. He is due to compete at the Silesia Diamond League this weekend along with New Zealanders Walsh, Gill, Hamish Kerr, Tori Peeters and Zoe Hobbs.

Tanner might be joining George Beamish in Monaco on July 21. Beamish, who left Whanganui Collegiate School in 2014 and has retained his Whanganui Club affiliation, has shown great form this year and tops the New Zealand rankings in four events - mile, 3000m, 5000m and 3000m steeplechase (a new event in his portfolio). He set a personal best of 8:17.63 in Stockholm on July 2. I am sorry Beamish is not competing in London as I would enjoy seeing him in action again.

Another Cooks Gardens winner and record holder is high jumper Hamish Kerr, who will be in action in London. He has had some big jumps this northern summer, including a 2.31m effort, and would love to match or better his New Zealand record of 2.34m, as would his coach Terry Lomax, who will be in London.

I hope Zoe Hobbs will run in the 100m. Hobbs took all pressure off herself by running a personal best and Oceania record of 10.96 in La Chaux-de Fonds on July 2. More importantly, it was a timely automatic qualifier for the World Championships.

There are some mouthwatering events in London and I can’t wait.