One of the season’s bests came from Tom Walsh who, in a stellar field, finished second with a 22.58m effort. World record-holder Ryan Crouser (USA) produced a meet record of 23.07m to win, but Walsh finished ahead with Joe Kovaks (USA) third and Jacko Gill fifth with 21.11m.
High jumper Hamish Kerr was fifth with 2.24m. He almost cleared 2.27, pulling up with a calf cramp on his first attempt. As his coach Terry Lomax said, “There were a couple of really good jumps, and [that] showed he is not far away from where he wants to be for next month’s world champs.”
Sam Tanner finished 10th in a strong 1500m field in which three set personal bests and three more season bests. Tanner was only just shy of his best (3:31.24) with his third-best ever 1500m in 3:31.60. He will have learned much in what was a large and competitive race, with only seconds separating the top dozen.
The Diamond League provides a series of outstanding quality meetings and such is the depth and quality, many athletes do not manage to get into the field. Eliza McCartney, featured a fortnight ago in the Chronicle, was one such athlete. She is a former Olympic bronze medal winner (Rio de Janeiro 2016) and is coming back well from a long-term injury. She confirmed her qualification for next month’s world championships with her 4.65m vault at the Spitzen meet in Lucerne on July 20 following a 4.71m win at the Australian Championships in April. McCartney will gain little comfort from the fact 4.71m would have seen her on the London podium. Fifth place went at 4.62m.
The big New Zealand middle-distance news came from Geordie (George) Beamish with his New Zealand 3000m steeplechase record of 8:13.26. This broke the record Peter Renner set back in 1984 in Koblenz, one of New Zealand’s longest-standing records.
Beamish did not run a major steeplechase when he was at school, but did win the New Zealand Schools 3000m championship at Cooks Gardens in 2014 in his final year at Whanganui Collegiate School. He took up a USA scholarship at Flagstaff Arizona in August 2015. He has fulfilled his early promise and leads the New Zealand rankings in four events (mile, 3000m, 5000m and 3000m steeplechase), and has now also qualified for the world championships in Steeples – a new event for Beamish, but one in which he has huge potential. I should correct one reference to the achievement in the Whanganui Chronicle earlier this week, or rather my part in it. I might have coached Beamish when at school, but I never ran for Scotland at the Commonwealth Games - I just wished I had.
Hopefully, I will be back in New Zealand to report on this weekend’s New Zealand Cross Country Championships.