Whanganui Collegiate School and Palmerston North Club athlete Juliet McKinlay has been breaking records and setting personal bests. Photo / Podium Photography
I must confess to being sorely tempted to take a quick trip back to Glasgow, the city of my birth, to go to the World Athletics Indoor Athletics Championships at the beginning of March.
Not only is the event being held at the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow where, as a youth, I enjoyed the annual winter fairground, but New Zealand is taking our largest and strongest team yet to the championships.
The team has strong Whanganui connections in the shape of middle-distance runner George (Geordie) Beamish, and the team leader is a former Whanganui Collegiate Athletic Club captain, Kat Austin. In the team are three Cooks Gardens stadium record-holders and other regular Pak’nSave Cooks Classic competitors.
Beamish left Whanganui Collegiate School in 2014, after finishing the New Zealand Secondary Schools competition at Cooks Gardens as 3000m champion and also a member of an impressive 4x400m gold medal team. He went on to a United States scholarship at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.
He has had an outstanding year, finishing fifth in the 3000m steeplechase at the World Athletics Championships, quickly followed by third place in the 5th Avenue Mile and the Diamond League final steeplechase. In the past month, indoors in Boston and New York he has broken the New Zealand 5000m record and run an outstanding 2 miles. In all the events he has demonstrated electric form with outstanding finishing speed. It will be good to see him return to 1500m to strengthen his armoury for the Paris Olympics 3000m steeplechase.
High jumper Hamish Kerr heads our stadium record-holders. Kerr set consecutive Cooks Gardens records in 2020, 2021 and 2022, and again delighted the Cooks Gardens crowd at this year’s Classic. Kerr won the Commonwealth gold and won bronze at the last edition of the Indoor Championships, and with a best of 2.34m could again mount the podium.
It is some years ago that pole vaulter Eliza McCartney set the Cooks Gardens record, a year before her Olympic bronze in 2016. McCartney has suffered a series of injury setbacks, but should be encouraged by her recent 4.84m performance indoors at Lieven that tops the 2024 world rankings. McCarney has an additional Whanganui connection because her father was a former Whanganui Collegiate high jump record-holder.
World shot put finalist and Commonwealth Games silver medal winner Jacko Gill holds our stadium record. He will be joined in the shot by regular Cooks Gardens visitor Tom Walsh, the reigning Commonwealth Games champion, and is seeking to join Dame Valerie Adams with five indoor medals. Walsh took world indoor bronze back in 2014, won back-to-back titles in 2016 and 2018, and gained another bronze at the last World Indoor Championships, in 2022.
New Zealand’s strength in shot is highlighted by the inclusion of Maddison Wesche who took bronze at the Commonwealth Games and was a finalist at the Olympic Games and world championships. Glasgow will be her world indoor debut.
The other team members are the in-form sprinter Zoe Hobbs in the 60m and rising 21-year-old Harvard student Maia Ramsden, who won the NCAA 1500m title in the summer.
The team will be led by former Whanganui athlete Kat Austin. Austin showed organisational ability as a student, giving a strong hint of her future organisational skills when she was club captain at Whanganui Collegiate School and, although injured that year, gave invaluable assistance. Austin has carved out a strong career in administration as Athletics New Zealand’s athlete support manager. The team will be in good hands. I only wish I could be there as a spectator at the exciting global event.
The second week of the Manawatū-Whanganui Centre Championships in Palmerston North on Tuesday had better support by travelling athletes than in week one in Whanganui.
It was great to see a large group of Whanganui athletes travelling together on Take it Easy Tours’ new bus, a reminder of past travelling times for the older members of the group.
Jonathan Maples, only hundredths of a second shy of his personal best, added the 200m to his 100m and 400m titles the previous week. Kaylee Bisschoff won the 80m hurdles in 12.75s. Juliet McKinlay, who finished fourth in her debut New Zealand heptathlon in Dunedin at the weekend with a Whanganui Collegiate School record, added the long jump and 100m hurdles to the three titles won a week earlier. In the hurdles, the wind-assisted time of 15.19s bettered her weekend personal best of 15.22s. Daniel Sinclair impressed in winning the 800m (1m 53.93s) while Hayden Zervos won the 5000m and Hugo Watson the high jump.