Beamish wins national invitation mile

Geordie Beamish Photo/File

Wanganui Collegiate's Geordie Beamish continued his golden summer with victory in the annual John Walker Junior Mile at Auckland's Mt Smart Stadium on Saturday.

Held during the John Walker Night of Miles, the annual junior race is an invitation-only event for which Athletics Auckland chooses the field from nominations by track officials around the country.

Beamish, who won the 3000m gold at the NZ Secondary School champs last week, flew himself up from Hawke's Bay to take part in the Junior Mile and was the first home in four minutes, 12.18 seconds.

Jordan Rackham, the national secondary schools 1500m champion, and Hamilton's 3000m national youth champion, Jacob Priddey, were second and third respectively, about four seconds behind Beamish.

Wanganui's coach of the year, Alec McNabb, was on holiday in Auckland and went to watch.

He said Year 12 runner Beamish was on top of his form.

"Geordie ran a good race - stayed with the pace and began to open up with two laps to go."

Beamish's time for the mile would have converted to 3.54 minutes for the 1500m, well under his personal best of 3.58.

He pocketed $400 for the win, but McNabb said that was eaten up by travel expenses, so experience was the true payoff.

Beamish had been coming back from injury so had not done much short distance running. The win had set him up for the season.