Aitkenhead beat Laura Nagel by four-hundredths of a second, clocking 4m 33.55s.
She said she “was just trying to get to the line”.
“I know Laura has a very good kick and I’ve been on the receiving end of it so it was really nice to be able to hold it and have the confidence to take it right to the line.
“I had no idea I had won the race, I just hoped I had dipped a bit better.”
Competition manager Alec McNab said “it was blowing a gale and raining” when the meet started.
“One gazebo blew out, it was looking like a disaster.
“Miraculously, by the time the mile was run, Whanganui was still. Sam Tanner said it was kind of like magic here - the wind stops at 8.45pm and starts back up again at 9.14pm.”
Jake Doran won the men’s 100m in 10.40s, breaking the 24-year-old stadium record of Gus Nketia.
McNab said for record purposes, wind couldn’t be stronger than two metres per second.
“His run was two metres exactly. We are lucky having a track like Cooks Gardens, we were able to run sprint races the other way - the back straight - which gave them a tailwind.
“In most cases, it was too strong but, for him, it was right on the button.”
Whanganui’s Jonathan Maples won the men’s 400m hurdles in 54.87s and Sophie Hancock won the women’s event in 1m 02.7s.
McNab said Maples had been carrying an injury but was close to his best in Whanganui.
“He knows that with races to come, he could retain his national title - that’s his aim.”
Commonwealth Games high jump champion Hamish Kerr completed a sixth successive victory at the Classic with a season-best clearance of 2.27m.
Auckland City’s Imogen Skelton cleared 1.8m to take the women’s title, with Commonwealth Games finalist Keeley O’Hagan retiring without clearing a height due to an Achilles issue.
New Zealand 400m hurdles record-holder Portia Bing claimed the 200m and 400m, with James Ford blasting off down the home stretch to win the men’s 400m in 48.09s, beating out Zach Saunders and Thomas Cowan.
McNab said the biggest event in terms of entries was the time-handicap 400m event.
That was taken out by Madison Rattray.
In the men’s long jump, Lewis Arthur secured the top spot with a leap of 7.48m, with Phoebe Edwards winning the women’s with a lifetime best jump of 5.89m.
Nick Palmer could not quite match his personal best but managed 18.93m in the men’s shot put to take gold.
Former World Championship finalist, Japan’s Sae Takemoto, won the women’s javelin with a best of 54.47m.
Felise Vahai Sosaia, of France, was a comprehensive winner of the men’s javelin with a best of 74.73m, ahead of New Zealand champion Douw Botes.
The Thomson siblings - Scott and Anna - claimed victory in their respective triple jump competitions.
McNab said despite being nervous, Whanganui’s Daniel Sinclair did a great job as pacemaker for the men’s mile event.
Sinclair is the New Zealand under-20 1500m champion.
“It was exactly what Tanner wanted and it was even paced,” McNab said.
He said the event as a whole was “a bit like ducks in water”.
“They seem to be going smoothly but under the surface, there is a lot of things trying to make it happen.
“It wasn’t the easiest meeting to run this year.”
Mike Tweed is an assistant news director and multimedia journalist at the Whanganui Chronicle. Since starting in March 2020, he has dabbled in everything from sport to music. At present his focus is local government, primarily the Whanganui District Council.
