Athletics: Mile run hints at more to come

By MURRAY McKINNON

A teenage middle-distance running sensation competing in his first mile race broke a 14-year-old record at the weekend.

Nick Willis, 17, of Hutt Valley, ran 4m 1.32s on Saturday in the annual mile at the famous Cooks Gardens track in Wanganui on Saturday.

By comparison, New Zealand running legend Murray Halberg's under-20 record, set at Sturges Park, Otahuhu, 49 years ago, was 4m 17.2s.



Willis, the New Zealand under-18 and secondary schools 800m and 1500m champion, carved more than 2s off Robbie Johnston's record that has stood since 1987.

En-route, Willis was timed through 1500m in 3m 44.4s, breaking Eddie Crowe's New Zealand under-18 record of 3m 46.10s.

Willis finished fourth behind winner Hamish Christensen, of Hastings (3m 58.73s), Simon Maunder (Counties Manukau, 3m 59.49s) and Australian Youcef Abdi (4m 00.47s).

Willis said that he had the perfect run on the inside lane.

"I wrote 4m 2s on a piece of paper and visualised it while warming up," he said.

"You can usually guess what you will run before a race, but you don't tell people, because they think you are joking. And what happened - I went faster."

The pre-race build-up was whether he would be able to beat Rex Maddaford's fastest time in New Zealand by an 18-year-old, of 4m 8.2s.

"That took the pressure off and left only me to think about breaking 4m 3s," Willis said.

Christensen joins John Walker in having run four sub-four-minute miles at Cooks Gardens.

Maunder said there was still a certain magic in breaking the four-minute barrier as he made it No 2 on the famous track.

Jason Stewart, of Napier, reduced his New Zealand under-20 800m record to 1m 48.6s in a close race with Australian Todd MacDonald, who won in 1m 48.3s.

In field events at the Cooks Gardens Classic, Tasha Williams put her disappointing throws at the Sydney Olympics well behind her with a fresh New Zealand resident and national hammer-throw record of 64.75m.

Though delighted with the record, which added 15cm to her previous best, the Christchurch athlete also expressed a tinge of frustration at missing the qualifying mark of 65m for the world championships to be held in Edmonton, Canada, in August.