Athletics Insight: Young Whanganui athletes produce personal bests at school championships

Whanganui High School's Bruce McGregor won the junior boys 300m hurdles at the New Zealand Secondary Schools Track and Field and Road Race Championships in Hastings.

The 52nd New Zealand Secondary Schools Track and Field and Road Race Championships will be remembered as the one where Sam Ruthe (Tauranga Boys’ College) shattered the 36-year-old 1500 metre record by eight seconds and added the 800m record.

Ruthe broke the 1500m record in his heat. Saturday morning in Hastings was a little cooler than the hot sunshine throughout the weekend and, although the breeze had risen, it eased slightly at 1500m heat time.

Conditions and the timings of both 800m and 1500m on the following day clearly convinced Ruthe to attempt the record on the Saturday.

In a solo effort, Ruthe not only broke the schools record but a number of NZ age group records, stopping the clock at 3m 38.62s, a world-class time and inside his own best of 3m 39.17s set in Los Angeles earlier in the year.

The performance gave Ruthe a big lead for the HMS Conway Memorial Cup (highest World Athletics points). He came within seven points of this the next day when he broke Brad Mathas’ (Cullinane College) 14-year-old record to run a world-class 1m 46.81s, almost four seconds inside the Mathas record. We witnessed two pieces of history with two world-class performances. Sprinter Kendra Scally-Tui (Mt Albert Grammar School) with her 100/200m double took the points trophy for the girls.

The hot conditions over the weekend and the atmosphere contributed to these and other outstanding performances.

Whanganui athletes had an outstanding championships with close to 40 personal best performances and many more seasonal bests over the weekend.

Although only two athletes stepped on to the podium, there were team and relay successes, medals reflecting sound development programmes. As these successes came mostly from athletes in the junior grades, this bodes well for the future and next year’s home championships will be a major target.

Bruce McGregor (Whanganui High School) had a memorable championships.

He won his first major title in the junior boys 300m hurdles on the final afternoon with an impressive personal best of 41.62s. This backed up his bronze earlier in the day in the 100m hurdles (14.90s), also a personal best. His day did not end there as he ran in the silver medal-winning Whanganui High School junior 4 x 100m team. A collector set of gold, silver and bronze medals made it a special day for McGregor.

Juliet McKinlay (Whanganui Collegiate School) had to dig deep to return to the podium. In the javelin, although throwing well, she looked out of medal contention until the last round when she threw 41.32m which, although not matching last year’s medal-winning throw, was her second throw over 40m and won a bronze medal.

In the long jump, she again left it late but came through in the penultimate round with 5.44m to take bronze, only 2cm shy of silver. McKinlay finished sixth in the triple jump and 100m hurdles, demonstrating her heptathlon prowess. In the hurdles, she had looked out of sorts in the heats but was a whole lot better in the final, where she clocked 15.10s, better than her bronze medal performance last year.

As I wrote in last week’s column, Whanganui High School looked to be strong in junior boys.

They delivered when it mattered with silver medals in the 4 x 100m and 4 x 400m relays. The High School 4 x 100m quartet had impressed in their heat, finishing second to Wellington College, clocking 45.10s, just two-hundredths behind Christchurch Boys High, winners of Heat 2.

They again finished behind Wellington College (45.02s) with 45.47s ahead of Christchurch Boys High School (45.59s). The team of Tyler O’Brien, Ethan Wells, Reiley Thomas and Joshua Richardson performed with distinction. Ethan Wells, who had set a whole raft of personal bests, joined Charlie McBride, Alex Payne and hurdle medal winner Bruce McGregor to add another silver in the 4 x 400m.

Whanganui Collegiate won gold in the mixed junior 4 x 400m team, the school’s 27th New Zealand Schools relay title. Although entries were small in this new event, the team was led off by Max Candish (sixth in junior 400m), followed by Year 9 Sophie Dunlop, middle-distance runner Noah Orlowski, with Harlynn Faalili anchoring. Cullinane College took bronze.

The Whanganui Collegiate junior girls 4 x 100m team of Josie Koubaridis, Katreena Luk, Phoebe Corin and Harlynn Faalili took a well-earned bronze while Nga Tawa was third in both the Year 9 three and six to score team events and second in both in the junior girls, a testament to the value of team events.

Next week, I will look at Whanganui performances in greater depth.