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thletics athletics
2009 AUSSIE CHAMPS Championships are to athletics what test matches are to cricket. They are longer, more protracted and often contain duller patches that the sport’s more abbreviated forms. Yet, for purists they are the end all and be all of the sport. Tim McGrath looks at the highlights of three long days of competition at the 87th Australian championships.
One could be forgiven for having a sense of deja vu at this year’s national championships. It was the third year in succession that the event was held in the vacuous ANZ Stadium in Brisbane and again attended by a small but loyal crowd of enthusiasts who conregated on the stainless steel benches of the steeply staired grandstand of the home straight. Some results seem as if they could have been plucked out of the previous two year’s meets, such as Joshua Ross winning the men’s
100m and Nick Bromley winning the 800m by unleashing his trademark kick off a slow pace. But while many things stayed the same, many changed. It was not quite a changing of the guard, but new faces were thrust more into the spotlight. In all, of the 35 national titles on offer, over a third (12) were won by athletes who had not won the event before. One of the more impressive breakthroughs came from Blake Lucas, who became the youngest man to ever win the pole vault and one of just 70 athletes in the long history of Australian athletics to win a national title whilst under the age of 19. Whilst having already tasted international competition, Jeff Riseley and Madeleine Pape both claimed their maiden national titles, in the 1500m and 800 respectively. It was the first time that Riseley had toed the line in a national 1500m final, having concentrated on the 800m in previous years. A fast pace was served up by Ireland’s
4The women’s 1500m saw an exciting race with the podium positions changing a number of times on the final lap.
David Campbell, which provided a springboard for the Victorian to clock a new personal best of 3:35.71 and gain automatic selection for the world championships – a welcome relief for an athlete who has had to rely on the discretion of Athletics Australia and the Australian Olympic Committee’s selectors for his past two representative berths. “One of the good things about tonight is being able to compete when it matters. It’s something that I haven’t done in the past – I went to world champs and bombed out, I hadn’t won a national title – so it was really important to get out there tonight and win for my confidence,” said Riseley after his race. “My last two [selections] have been questionable and the selectors have been really favourable towards me and we had to fight pretty hard, so its really good for me to be able to do it on my own.” There were others more experienced at winning – Tamsyn Lewis for example, who clocked up her fourteenth and fifteenth national