College sports: 150 athletes line up for Te Awamutu duathlon

By DAVE WORSLEY

The roads around Te Awamutu will be packed with athletes as the secondary schools duathlon championships take place on Saturday.

Close to 150 competitors will be taking part in races which range from a 2.5km run, 11km cycle, 2.9km run in the junior division up to 5km run, 20km cycle, 2.9km run.

Racing starts at 8am for the juniors, intermediates begin at 9am and seniors 10am.

The main focus of the senior girls race will be on Anna Hamilton from Rangitoto College and Diocesan Anna Elvery. Hamilton is the senior girls triathlon champion and a member of the New Zealand Under 19 world triathlon champs team. Elvery won the national intermediate title last year and is the Auckland senior girls duathlon title-holder.

The field for the senior boys includes a number of highly rated multisporters. This includes Michael Kraakman (St Kentigern), Tim MacIntosh (Auckland Grammar) and Bruce Hunter (Macleans College).

In the intermediate girls Takapuna Grammar's Rebecca Spence is the outright favourite given her win by almost three minutes at the New Zealand triathlon championships.

In the intermediate boys there are plenty of competitors with no real favourites.

The junior grades are also expected to have large turnouts, but no strong favourites.

TENNIS

The seeded players take to the court today in the ITF 18's Indoor event at Vodafone Park with top-ranked GD Jones and Marina Erakovic the most notable New Zealanders aiming for titles in Sunday's finals.

Erakovic, 15, who plays for the Kohimarama club and attends Glendowie College is second seed behind the Netherlands Pasquale Jansma.

Since recovering from injury, which kept her out of competitive tennis for several months, Erakovic has improved her ITF junior ranking from 317 to 224 and her doubles ranking from 1018 to 170.

Winners on day one included Daniel Moser, 14, from Kristin School. The national 14s champion, Moser, defeated Westlake's Brock Mustard in straight sets and now plays 16th seed Marin Markovich.

Top boys seed Jones of Kings College will play Aucklander Andrew Allen in the first round, scheduled to start at 8am this morning. Main competition for Jones will come from Kiwis William Ward, Kiril Tcherveniach and Aussie Patrick Jozwik.

RUGBY

Auckland won their sixth consecutive Northern Region secondary schools tournament by beating North Harbour 30-8 in a powerful display at Opotiki at the weekend. The foundation for the win was laid in the first half as they created a 20-3 lead using their big forwards.

Waikato beat Counties Manukau 30-17 in the play-off for third and fourth and Bay of Plenty just edged out Auckland B 12-10 for fifth and sixth positions. Northland finished in 7th place.

SWIMMING

The New Zealand secondary schools champs are being held at the Waitakere Aquatic Centre this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. One person who won't be there is Rangitoto College's Corney Swanepoel who will be competing at the world championships in Barcelona and was recently the swimmer of the meet at the shortcourse event in Germany.

KART

Round two of the Auckland championships had Rangitoto defending their teams title and picking up two golds and one silver from over 100 competitors at the Mt Smart Raceway. Mt Albert's Mitchell Osborne was never put under serious threat in his bid to take out the championship. Brock Barrie finished second and Liston College's Sam McMahon was the dark horse coming through from fifth in round one, to take the bronze.

This week

Today-Sunday: ITF 18's indoor champs, Vodafone Park, Glen Innes,

Friday-Saturday: Secondary Schools Swimming champs - Waitakere Aquatic Centre.

Saturday: Duathlon Champs, Te Awamutu. Tuesday: Badminton, Auckland Teams event.