Paige Cromarty produced two major breakthrough performances, shattering her previous 300 metre hurdle best by over 1.5 seconds.
Cromarty handled the start on the back straight into the stiff wind well and held her form and rhythm with the tail wind on the home straight.
Cromarty’s previous best of 46.47 was set in Palmerston North a fortnight earlier in a race where hurdles were wrongly placed, invalidating performances.
Before that, Cromarty had never run under 47 seconds over the seven flights of hurdles. She backed this up when she finished third in the top 200 metre race in 26.21 seconds, almost half a second faster than her previous best albeit with a 2.8 m/s following wind (legal limit for records is 2 m/s).
Both performances will build confidence for the Whanganui Girls’ College school leaver. It will also mean that Whanganui will have two leading long hurdlers at the New Zealand Schools Championships as Cromarty will join defending champion Maggie Jones (High School) in Inglewood.
Pascale Bowie (Whanganui Collegiate), who was third in Masterton with a season’s best, is also entered for Masterton.
Lucas Martin was outstanding in the 3000-metre walk setting a Manawatū Centre and Whanganui Collegiate School record in an impressive performance from gun to tape.
He won his race by just under two minutes, beating his own best by close to five seconds. Martin was not only battling the clock but at times a gnarly wind that was not conducive to top performance. Martin would love to finally step to the top of the podium having been second in three consecutive New Zealand School Championships.
Daniel Sinclair ran his last 3000 metres back at Inglewood in October 2021 and needed a good performance to guarantee a place in the A race at the championships, as an experiment timed finals will be adopted if the field is large rather than the traditional heats. Sinclair obliged and ran a 17 second personal best to go straight to seventh in the rankings (8:40.90).
He too won by a large margin and also had to handle the gusty wind. Teammate Louise Brabyn also won by a large margin and should be encouraged by her second best run over the distance (10:23.35). Both athletes impressed at this Tuesday’s club night over 1000 metres.
The Sinclair family had a good day when Daniel’s younger brother Matthew, returning after recovering from a fractured wrist, set a personal best by six seconds over 800 metres just behind teammate Nate Burke who took four seconds off his best. His cousin James Hercus had a major breakthrough finishing fourth in the 800 metres A race in a pleasing and confidence-lifting three second best (1:56.79).
Morgan Wilson set two personal bests over 100 metres and 200 metres 13.41 and 28.49 respectively and surprisingly both times were inside the legal limit. Wilson should take much from these performances as she continues to make progress as a sprinter.
Theo Almazan was not so lucky with the wind reading in his 100 metres where he rode a big tail wind (3.9 m/s) to finish in 11.40 seconds. He should gain confidence in the fact that he can control that speed in his developing sprinting career.
Jonty Tripe won the triple jump with a 12.18m performance with a legal following wind. Greta Darke won her steeplechase and ran in the winning 4 x 400 team where she joined Cromarty and Brabyn with Josephine Perkins running the anchor leg. Perkins will miss the Schools Championships as she will be on the Spirit of Adventure. It is pleasing that the Whanganui Collegiate Girls’ captain has overcome many injuries and kept training even though she will not end her school career at the championships. Athletes like Perkins are important in the sport.
The wins were not enough to lift Whanganui above 4th in the three round 14 Club Competition, suffering from a smaller than expected team.
