GEORDIE Beamish has probably run his last race in the Manawatu/Wanganui singlet and he ended with yet another national title at the New Zealand Championships in Wellington last weekend. Beamish had to dig deep to retain his 1500m title. He chose not to run in the 800m to keep himself fresh for the longer race. His main rival and leading junior 800m champion, Jordan Rackham of Southland also chose to bypass the 800m. Jacob Priddey of Waikato, who was pre-meeting favourite for the 5000m, also chose to leave his efforts for the 1500m.
Beamish joined his former school mates Max Attwell, Josh Ledger and present student, Harry Symes in the junior 4 x 400m team that finished second. The Collegiate team had won the NZ Secondary Schools by a wide margin in December. They finished less than a second behind that winning time in 4:22.53s, a significant effort against Centre-based teams.
Christian Conder took a silver medal in the youth 1500m after an outstanding race where almost the whole field were still together 200m from home. Conder burst to the front with 50m to go but was pipped on the line. His 3s personal best of 4:00.28s was some consolation for this promising runner.
Max Attwell, who had won the junior decathlon in early February, added the 400m hurdles junior championship to his NZ Schools 300m hurdles championship splashing his way through a very wet inside lane to win in his first long hurdles race in 57.64s. He won bronze medals in the high jump with a season's best leap of 1.91m and the 110m hurdles in 16.26s. The high jump was won by one of the athletes of the meeting, Hamish Kerr, who is now based at Massey University. Kerr also won the senior men's high jump, breaking a winning run from Wellington's Billy Crayford.
Alice Bird had a tough race in the steeples, where she was a little below her best and was disappointed at not repeating her silver medal of last year. She can take considerable consolation from the fact that she only narrowly lost out to Harriet Bush (Canterbury) who had earlier in the meeting finished second in the 3000m in a time well in excess of Bird's best. Bird is a promising distance runner and has a chance to improve significantly at the North Island Schools at the end of the month, as she prepares for next term's cross country.