Athletics Insight: Whanganui student Damian Hodgson claims NZ Schools hurdles title

Damian Hodgson with his senior boys 300m hurdles medal.

Damian Hodgson’s decision to restrict his football to just his Whanganui High School team in winter to give more time to establish a winter base for summer track and field has paid dividends.

That decision, along with solid early season preparation and sound coaching, led to a New Zealand Schools senior boys 300-metre hurdle title.

Hodgson looked good in qualifying with a Round 1 win in a personal best 39.56 seconds. In the final, he nailed all seven flights of hurdles and finished strongly to win with a 37.78s personal best performance (running under 38s for the first time).

Harry Williamson (Christchurch Boys High School) finished second (38.01s) followed by four Auckland athletes. Seven of the eight finalists set personal bests.

Hodgson became the seventh Whanganui athlete to win a NZ Schools long-hurdles title (300m/400m). The first was Michael French in 1976 who won Whanganui Collegiate’s first track and field gold in any event and, most recently, Hodgson’s former teammate Maggie Jones won the senior girls in 2022.

Hodgson backed up his hurdle victory by finishing eighth in the 200m final, which he ran 25 minutes after his hurdles. He set yet another personal best (22.83s), further highlighting his progress this season.

Hodgson was named in the NZ Secondary Schools Championship team, which will compete in the late January Classic Meets. He will have his first run in the New Zealand black singlet in the Pak’nSave Cooks Classic in the 400m hurdles.

He will be joined in the New Zealand team by Juliet McKinlay (Whanganui Collegiate School), who was named the most promising combined events athlete at the NZ Secondary Schools Championships in Timaru.

McKinlay opened the meet with a 7m improvement in the javelin to set a new Whanganui Collegiate record of 42.57m to take bronze, only relinquishing silver in the final round. She finished fourth in the triple jump and third in the 100m hurdles with a season’s best of 15.30s, missing silver by one one-hundredth of a second. She finished sixth in the long jump, where she was frustrated with her run-up and the realisation that her recent form would have brought silver was little consolation.

From a barefoot win at Whanganui Secondary Schools in 2023 to the NZ Schools podium has been the exciting story of progress for Whanganui High School sprinter Hayden Stead.

The picture of the then-Rangitīkei College athlete running barefoot at Cooks Gardens prompted a kind gift of a pair of running spikes. Stead has not looked back, finishing third in the junior boys 100m final on Sunday in 11.40s, having run a sensational wind-assisted 11.11s in the opening round.

Stead played a key role in Whanganui High School’s silver medal in the junior boys 4 x 100m. The team of James McGregor, Ethan Wells, Reiley Thomas and Stead should be thrilled with their podium finish with an outstanding 44.97s performance. This was especially meritorious as the resurfacing of Cooks Gardens meant the team was unable to do quality baton change practice over the past three weeks. The team result will benefit all four athletes and will be the base on which future individual success can be built.

Hannah Byam (Whanganui Collegiate School) had an outstanding championships. She confirmed her recent good steeplechase form by taking the silver medal in the 2000m junior girls steeplechase, following her fourth place last year in Christchurch and sixth in Inglewood a year earlier.

To improve her work over steeplechase barriers, Byam has added 300m hurdle events to her training programme. She has made steady progress in her secondary event. She was close to her best in Round 1 (49.64s) and set a new personal best in the semi-final (48.74s) to qualify fifth fastest for the final the following day. Byam had to be content with sixth in the final on Sunday (49.34s). The hurdles was run less than two hours after her steeplechase podium finish. Byam’s hurdle training partner Grace Fannin (Girls College) reversed their semi-final positions, finishing fifth with a personal best of 47.17s.

Medals are the icing on the cake but there were many more exciting and promising performances from Whanganui athletes that I will reflect on in next week’s Insight article. This includes fourth places from Whanganui High School athletes Lulu Dufty (junior girls triple jump) and August Thongskul (junior boys long jump) and Juliet McKinlay in the senior girls triple jump.

Exciting times lie ahead for Whanganui athletes on the newly-resurfaced Cooks Gardens track with Club Nights beginning on January 14, leading up to the Pak’nSave Cooks Classic on January 25.