Athletics: Dannevirke’s Laurie Malcolmson breaks North Island records

Laurie Malcolmson with the 7kg weight that won him a silver. Photo / Dave Murdoch

Laurie Malcolmson is a record-breaker.

The Dannevirke athlete broke two North Island records when competing in the North Island Masters athletics championship in the 70-75-year age group.

Competing at Massey University in Palmerston North last month, Laurie entered in three track and three field events.

In the field he broke the North Island record in winning the javelin, placed second in the weight throw — like a hammer on a shorter chain — and was third in the hammer, the second-place winner being Tuariki Delamere, former Minister of Education in 1998-9.

On the track, he won both the 60m and 100m sprints, just missing out on the 60m record by three-one-hundredths of a second, but then he triumphed in the 300m hurdles breaking its North Island record.

For Laurie, the latter was particularly satisfying because he had not competed in the hurdles since having knee surgery five years ago. His target now is to break the New Zealand 300m hurdles record in his age group in February at Christchurch, as he still holds the New Zealand record for his previous two age groups 65-70 and 70-75 years.

Laurie started athletics at school, finding life on a dairy farm made him pretty fit. Moving to Auckland, he trained at Mt Smart and ran in the first athletics event there.

Competing in the shorter track events, javelin, discus, triple and long jump, Laurie held Auckland titles and decathlon national titles.

He was invited to trial for the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. In 1974, he was in line for the New Zealand Commonwealth Games in sprinting, clocking his best time of 10.4 seconds for the 100m.

Sadly, injury prevented him from competing and, discouraged, gave up the sport.

Thanks to encouragement from his wife, Gloria, Laurie resumed in the sport in 1981 and he has since competed in national, Oceania and world masters games, the latter in Japan, the US, Australia, South Africa and Auckland (2017).

Laurie trains hard every second day in the summer in Dannevirke at the Domain and in Riverdale Rd for fitness, travelling to the Massey University facilities for specialist work on his different disciplines on Thursday evenings.

He finds the friendships he has made over the years always competing in the same age groups a great attraction to keep on going despite the odd health issue.

Dave Murdoch is a part-time photojournalist based in Dannevirke. For the last 10 years he has covered any community story telling good news about the district.