DUAL WINNER: Gore athlete Emma Hopcroft claimed the women's long jump with a leap of 5.79m after taking out the 100m dash at the Cooks Classic in Wanganui on Tuesday.PHOTOS/SUPPLIED
There is something special about touring with a group of young motivated athletes. The Young Olympian Classic Tour has again been a rewarding and satisfying experience.
Six athletes who started the Tour in Hastings last Friday will compete in all three Classic meetings in the week ending at the Capital Classic tomorrow in Wellington.
A further four left the tour after Tuesday's Cooks Classic in Wanganui with eight athletes joining us on Monday and competing in Wanganui and Wellington. The result was the Cooks Classic benefited by having all 19 touring athletes competing.
The young athletes benefited and added value to the meeting. Personal bests were set by six of the group with others setting season's bests. Included in the PBs was the baby of the tour, South Islander Caitlin Bonne, who at only 14 had taken a throwing double at the Dunedin South Island Colgate Games just before joining the tour.
On Tuesday she stepped up to senior competition and joined the handicap javelin, throwing against veteran international, Stuart Farquhar, his training partner Ben Langton-Burnell, New Zealand Schools Junior title winner Aidan Smith, and Girls' Schools title winner Laura Overton.
Bonne was not phased by the competition and relished the handicap nature of the event in which she had 43 metres added to her throw. In the actual competition, Farquhar threw an outstanding 79.96m (tantalisingly close to the 80m mark that had attached to it a substantial cheque).
Bonne added 3m to her personal best and finished just behind Farquhar on the handicap which was won by Taranaki's Kyle van der Merwe.
The success of the handicap was that all throwers were involved in tight competition with only 5m separating the 9-strong field at the end of the St John's Club-sponsored event.
When involved with the organisation of major events one tends only to get snapshots of the action and the feel of the meeting on Tuesday was no exception.
The high jump was a major attraction and thanks to the wonders of modern technology, as announcer I was kept up to date with the progress by text messages to my assistant in the announcing box.
This allowed me to pass on timely information to the spectators.
The event produced outstanding performances. The women's was won by visiting Australian teenager Nicola McDermott who jumped 1.87m to not only win the prize money but pocket $200 in incentive bonus. Liz Lamb finished second in 1.80m to win $50. In the male section, Australian visitor Chris Dodds jumped an impressive 2.17m for a bonus and winning cheque, defeating Billy Crayford who came very close to 2.14m but should be delighted with his 2.10m and his $50 bonus cheque.
The other handicap event was the 400m where in the men's and women's events handicap times were deducted from their final performance.
Again, the handicapping was successful with only a small margin separating first to last. Masters athlete Vanessa Story from Palmerston North won the women's handicap and the "winner take all prize" by running a season's best of 60.14s.
In the men's, visiting South Island decathlete, Jack Henry, took the prize with an impressive personal best (50.95). The actual race was won by Scott Burch who only missed the sub-48s bonus by less than half a second, with Collegiate School leaver, Josh Ledger, running a season's best 49.66s but this was not quite good enough to defeat Henry who had a 2s advantage over Ledger.
Although the mile was probably the slowest on record this does not detract from the outstanding effort of Young Olympian Tour Captain, Jordan Rackham who ran a personal best 4.12.45 returning to the track where he won the NZSS 1500m title in December. Rackham took the bold step of making an early break and had the nerve to hold the advantage with an especially good final lap of 50s.
Rackham said: "I did not come all the way to Wanganui to watch [Brad] Mathas run away from me." Southlander Rackham is an athlete with an exciting future and there could be an outstanding battle with Geordie Beamish at the National Junior Championships in early March in Wellington.
Beamish continued his winning way by adding the 3000m NZ Championship run in conjunction with the Classic to add to the 1500m title won in March, the NZ Schools Championship in 2013 and 2014, the North Island Championships in 1500 and 3000m and the NZ Cross Country Championship in June.
Beamish, who had won the Potts Classic Junior 1500m last weekend, again demonstrated his ability to compete successfully in a variety of distances and in a very different manner. Beamish, is in fact, unbeaten on the track since April 2013. This run of success could end at the Capital Classic when he steps down to 800m and runs against some of the leading NZ men 2-lap specialists.
The women's mile was won in commanding fashion by Rosa Flanagan who led right from the start in a typically aggressive front running performance. Flanagan, who had finished 7th at World Juniors last year in Steeples, is a name to watch. She was a member of the Young Olympian Tour in 2013.