Athletics: Counties retain title by sizeable margin

By MURRAY McKINNON

Counties Manukau retained the national league title at Wanganui at the weekend.

They scored 463 points to beat the Hastings Hornets by nearly 100 points.

Counties had a compact team, with top performances coming from Kalera Nacewa, who competed in nine events for wins in the 200m, and the triple jump with a 12.10m leap.

Brent Booker, runner-up in the national decathlon championship, took part in five, scoring valuable points in the field events.

But the top performance came from Valerie Adams, who further improved on her own New Zealand under-20 and under-18 hammer throw record with a heave of 58.12m. Adams also won the discus, with a throw of 48.63m. Competing for the Auckland City team, she helped them to victory in the division-two section, beating Wellington Athletic Club.

Hamish Christiansen, in his first 1500m race in 12 months, won convincingly in 3m 51.3s. He also won the 800m in 1m 56.61s.

Wellington's Shaka Sola threw his best discus this season, 53.77m, and won the shotput with 17.04m.

Bays Cougars won the under-20 league title, beating Waikato-Bay of Plenty by 18 points.

For Bays, James Mortimer won the 100m hurdles in 14.41s and 200m in 21.86s, raced into a steady headwind.