How the Potts Classic has put Hastings on track as an athletics mecca

Richard Potts takes a look at the track where he hopes records may be in store at Saturday's Potts Classic. Photo / Warren Buckland

If you think the chance of a New Zealand sprint record being set in Hastings is a dream, well, there's already been one record before they even line up tomorrow.

Against the trends in the pandemic era, the 210 senior and junior athletes coming from around New Zealand for the four-and-a-quarter-hours track and field meeting at Mitre 10 Park's William Nelson Athletics Precinct in Hastings is the most there's ever been.

It put some hurdles in front of the 23rd Potts Classic athletics meet organiser Richard Potts, a half-hour's breathing space disappearing as the numbers grew, with start times changing regularly.

For example, the final of likely feature the women's 100 metres was 6.35pm, then 6.40pm, and now it's 6.50pm.

Even some of the profile has changed at the last minute, with the announcement of a new World Athletics Continental Tour "Challenger" status in just the last week. Performances also attract bonus points towards World rankings.

All the athletes have aspirations – the alluring "PB" of a personal best, and for some may be places at the Commonwealth Games or World Championships later in the year, although there are several top hopefuls who won't be present, either staying abroad or still coming off recovery from such events as the Tokyo Olympics last July-August and in early stages of preparation for this year's big mid-year events.

Supporting the senior cast in Hastings will be another 48 mainly-Hastings Athletics Club children on the baby steps towards careers not only in athletics but also the other sports towards which many gravitate over the years, the biggest competition to track and field itself.

Subject to the injury niggles that are part and parcel of sport, all are near the peak of their season's form, busting for the opportunity to compete against the best possible in the weird era of Covid-19, and the ever-present threat that such meetings might not go ahead at all.

Fingers are crossed after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's announcement on Thursday that if new pandemic runner Omicron becomes too predominant there would be a shutdown within 24 to 48 hours to try to make the Covid-19 variant a sprint rather than a marathon.

Doing its part is the Allan and Sylvia Potts Trust, which runs the meeting in conjunction with the Hastings Athletics Club.

It would love to see the grandstand filled and will, in-line with the many IAAF and Athletics New Zealand conditions, ensure it's a full-vaccination meet.

Entry at the gate is free, with golden coin donations in the arena going to the Cancer Society.

The action starts at 3.30pm and ends with the New Zealand men's 3000 metres championship starting at 7.40pm, with the dream including ideal conditions for the women's 100 metres (heats from 5.39pm, final 6.50pm), featuring 24-year-old Auckland-based Taranaki sprinter Zoe Hobbs, who will have seven opponents, including Hawke's Bay's own Georgia Hulls.

Local Georgia Hulls is one of the hopefuls in what shapes as a blockbuster women's 100m. Photo / NZME

While Hobbs is Birmingham-bound, most of the rest will be looking at the possibility of New Zealand also having a women's 4x100 metres relay team at the Games in August.

Put in place when the venue opened 15 years ago after former Hawke's Bay track and field HQ Nelson Park across town closed in 2007 to make away for a big-box retail shopping centre, it has not seen many track records.

But it is gathering pace, the Potts Classic more and more at the forefront, and it is host in March to the national championships, as it was last year.

The Polytan is a few years over what was its expected lifespan and is due for a $600,000 replacement in 2023, but Hobbs has played a role in ensuring its retirement will be a happy one.

She set a New Zealand resident record there in 2020 and equalled the national record there with an 11.32sec dash 12 months ago – the precursor to finally claiming the record outright at 11.27sec five weeks ago.

That would have been good enough for fourth at the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast, Australia, when the women's 100 metres was won in 11.14sec.

Nailing home the point that breaking athletics records is not easy, and the conditions must be perfect, are that Florence "Flo Jo" Griffith Joyner's World Record of 10.49sec was set almost 34 years ago. The Commonwealth Games record of 10.85sec was set in Glasgow in 2014.

The current Hastings arena is better known for field events records, most notably the World Junior shot put record which set a 15-year-old Jacko Gill's career alight at the national Secondary Schools' championships 10 years ago.

More of the many peak performances expected on the night come in one of the smallest events – the women's pole vault, where four compete.

They don't include Eliza McCartney, the national record holder at 4.94 metres and 2016 Olympic bronze medallist whose return from injury to compete at the Potts Classic last year was stopped in its tracks – in the warm-up on the night.

But coach Jeremy McColl says she is in training and on target for international commitments, but he's in town with two more hopefuls who, all going well, could give New Zealand three in the event in Birmingham.

Olivia McTaggart (PB 4.55m) and Imogen Ayris (4.5m) both did Commonwealth Games B-standard jumps of 4.45m in Hastings on Wednesday evening, and asked if they're capable of better on Saturday night, he said: "Yes. Basically they're aiming for as high as they can."

The reliability of conditions in Hastings, MetService confirms a fine day and the light following sea breeze in the evening McColl says is needed, makes the Hastings arena more and more appealing to the top athletes, and he's not surprised by the record of athletes at the meeting.

Richard Potts, son of late running champions Allan and Sylvia Potts, who the Classic commemorates, is one who knows the durability of records in the sport, being still the holder of the Secondary Schools championships' Senior Boys 1500 metres record set in 1989.

"The thing is that this meet is getting better and better every year," he says. "Without the superstars, and international competitors we've had in the past – from Australia, Finns, Germany ... 210 athletes, up from 190 last year, it's a record."