Napier runner's record falls - after 22 years

Jason Stewart back in Napier after the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. A national Under 19 800 metres record he set four years earlier stood for 22 years before it was broken last week. Photo / NZME

A former Hawke's Bay runner's national track record has been broken by a holder who hadn't even been born when the previous mark was run.

Jason Stewart, now 40 and a former pupil of Napier Boys' High School, was an 18-year-old when he set the national Under-19s 800 metres record of 1min 48.73sec at Papakura on January 26, 2000.

The record was broken by Aucklander James Harding, formerly of King's College, at the Night of 5s meeting at the AUT Millennium Stadium, on Auckland's North Shore, last Wednesday.

Paced for the first lap and all but alone for the second, Harding clipped almost eight-10ths of a second from the record to post a new mark of 1min 47.96sec.

Stewart, who eventually won two national senior men's 800m titles, strode on to the international stage when he finished seventh in the 2000 World Junior Championships in Chile.

He then represented New Zealand at the 2004 Olympics in Athens with a personal best of 1min 46.24sec for 19th, the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki, and in 2006 the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne (fifth). Representing Oceania he was eighth at the World Cup in Athens, also in 2006.

Stewart had a career-best 1min 46.19sec, run in Germany in 2005 and was also a prominent 1500m runner.

A year ago, Harding broke a New Zealand Under-18 record previously held by Nick Willis, now in the twilight of a long 1500m-focused international career at the age of 38.