Latest news with #PerthTrackClassic
News18
24-04-2025
- Sport
- News18
Japan's Genki Dean, Sri Lanka's Rumesh Pathirage Among Foreign Stars Included For Neeraj Chopra Classic
'Dean brings strong credentials from the Asian circuit, a top-10 world ranking and a personal best of 84.28m," organisers said in a release. Sri Lanka's number one javelin thrower Pathirage entered the 85m club in 2024 at the Asian Throwing Championships in Mokpo, Korea with an effort of 85.45m — which is his personal best. The 22-year-old again breached the coveted mark with a 85.41m throw at the Perth Track Classic in Australia last month. While announcing a shift in venue from the earlier decided Panchkula to Bengaluru on Monday, Chopra had said that a Brazilian, who had featured in the Paris Olympics final, will also take part in the NC Classic. The organisers on Thursday specified the name of the Brazilian Luiz Mauricio da Silva. 'A South American powerhouse with multiple podium finishes at the South American Athletics Championships. His personal best: 85.91m," the release said. Advertisement Chopra had also invited Pakistan's Olympic champion Arshad Nadeem who, however, declined the offer, citing clash of dates with his training schedule for the upcoming Asian Athletics Championships. Chopra himself is also taking part in the event and the names of the other Indian participants are likely to be announced in the coming days. He had said that 3-4 Indians will compete in the event. The maiden edition of Neeraj Chopra Classic javelin throw event will be teeming with stars as the likes of Anderson Peters of Grenada and Thomas Rohler of Germany are taking part. advetisement Peters, who hails from Grenada, is a two-time world champion and Rohler is the gold-medallist from the 2016 Olympics. The participation of Kenyan Julius Yego, a silver-medallist in the 2016 Rio Olympics besides being a 2015 World Championships gold winner, and American Curtis Thompson, who is the current season leader with 87.76m, has also been confirmed.
Reuters
10-04-2025
- Sport
- Reuters
Johnson wants another Australian sprinter to break the 10-seconds barrier
MELBOURNE, April 10 (Reuters) - Still "Australia's fastest man", Patrick Johnson will watch with interest as a crop of young sprinters look to take down the 100 metres record he has held for over 20 years at national athletics championships in Perth this week. Johnson remains the only Australian to break the 10-second barrier, having clocked 9.93 seconds at a meet in Mito, Japan in 2003. Now a sports administrator in his 50s, Johnson never imagined his mark could survive so long and will be happy to see it broken. "Look, I was the first but I never wanted to be the last," Johnson told Reuters. "It's nice to have a few sprinters having a look at it." Those on the hunt include 21-year-old Lachlan Kennedy, who ran 10.03 seconds at the Perth Track Classic a month ago despite a sluggish start out of the blocks. Kennedy backed that up with a runner-up finish in the 60 (6.50) at the World Indoor Championships in Nanjing, and upset Australia's 17-year-old sensation Gout Gout in the 200 at the recent Maurie Plant Meet in Melbourne. Kennedy will go head-to-head with Rohan Browning, who set Australia's second-fastest 100 time of 10.01 seconds at the Tokyo Olympics. Gout, who ran 10.04 with an illegal wind at the Australian schools championship last December, will run the 100 in the under-20 event. BUDDING RIVALRIES While Australia has never been a force in global men's sprinting, the budding rivalries and emerging talent have seen interest spike in local athletics after the Paris Olympics. Australia won seven athletics medals at Paris, the nation's best Olympic haul since Melbourne 1956. The Maurie Plant Meet drew 10,000 people to Lakeside stadium to watch the Gout-Kennedy showdown in the 200 the first sell-out crowd for a one-day athletics event in Australia in over 20 years. With Australia hosting the Olympics in Brisbane 2032, Johnson is enjoying the hype around sprinting, and recalls a similar buzz when he and Matt Shirvington battled in the 100. Five-times national champion Shirvington held Australia's record of 10.03 seconds for five years before the late-blooming Johnson snatched it. It was a crushing blow for Shirvington, who had been obsessed with breaking the 10-second barrier and was known for driving a Saab with "SUB-10S" on the number plates. The goal proved unattainable for the runner nicknamed "Shirvo", who retired in 2008. Johnson said expectations can be a millstone for sprinters. He carried his own after he ran 9.88 seconds with an illegal wind at a meet in Perth in early-2003. "I expected I was going to smash it but conditions weren't right. I went the whole (domestic) season, only losing one race," he said. "The only time I did (the record) was when I went to Japan after having a little bit of rest following some heavy training." Like Shirvington, the 10-second barrier is on Kennedy's mind. He has tipped that he will break it in Perth and wants to beat Gout in the race to become Australia's first to run the 200 in under 20 seconds. He will have a re-match with Gout, who ran 20.04 at the schools meet in December to eclipse Peter Norman's long-standing national record. Johnson will welcome another Australian in the 10-second club but says the next one will need to be ready for the pressure that comes with it, particularly with an Olympics on the horizon. "There's always going to be hype with new talent," he said. "We like to jump on our stars."
The Guardian
09-04-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
‘Perth is primed for fast times': Australian athletics' Generation Next set to light up nationals
It's not a good week to be a national record. The Fremantle doctor, Perth's famous heat and 14mm of vulcanised rubber are exciting clock-watchers at this week's Australian athletics championships as a new generation of sprint stars take to the swift WA Athletics Stadium. All-age events are yet to begin but already the meet has delivered one high-profile record – teenager Leah O'Brien's new under-18 100m mark that is just four hundredths off Torrie Lewis's senior standard – and emerging stars including Gout Gout and Lachie Kennedy are greedy for more sprinting history after their spectacular recent development. Kennedy is racing in the 200m against Gout, after the memorable showdown between the pair at the Maurie Plant meet two weeks ago. But they will not meet over 100m, with Kennedy running the open category and Gout only the under-20 event. Regardless, Kennedy is looking at the event as an opportunity to go under the historic 10-second barrier. 'I'm aiming for a sub-10 time for sure. In one of the rounds I'll do it, and then I want to try and break the Australian record in the 100m,' he said. His personal best of 10.03s was set at the Perth Track Classic last month just prior to travelling to China for his historic silver medal in the 60m at the world indoor championships. The national benchmark is 9.93s, with a tailwind of 1.8m/s, set by Patrick Johnson in 2003 in Japan. He is the only Australian to run under 10 seconds legally, but Johnson actually ran faster than his record in Perth the month before he travelled with a tailwind beyond the legal 2m/s limit. Matt Lynch, state performance advisor at Queensland Athletics, has watched Kennedy and Gout closely in recent months, and believes given the 'amazing' conditions in Perth 'we could see some special performances'. Lynch said the ingredients for fast times include the combination of heat – the forecast for Friday is higher than 30C and mid-20s over the weekend – and the world class rubber surface, manufactured by the Mondo company responsible for the world's best athletic tracks. 'That combined with the Fremantle doctor as a tailwind, the dry desert air and cooler evenings, and Perth is primed for fast times,' he said, explaining a cool change helps harden the top of the rubber while the bottom layer remains bouncy. Johnson's times in Perth in early 2003, of 9.88s and 9.90s, were set at the now-demolished Perry Lakes track, a site within a kilometre of the new WA Athletics Stadium, built in 2009. The new venue replicates Perry Lakes' orientation that opens the track to the dominant local afternoon wind, the Fremantle doctor, that surges in off the Indian Ocean and into the arena at the backs of the athletes running up the home straight. However Danny Kevan, a sprint coach at the Western Australian Institute of Sport, warned that sometimes the winds in Perth are unpredictable, either swirling around to a headwind or sometimes with a velocity behind runners that is too high for legal times. The wind is measured by a sensor 50m from the finish line, about a metre from the inside of the track. The reading for each race is an average over 10 seconds from when the gun is fired. 'When we get it right, it's perfect, look at 1.7 for her [O'Brien's record-breaking run on Tuesday], you couldn't have asked for it to be any better, really,' Kevan said. 'Or… maybe 1.9.' Sign up to The Recap The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend's action after newsletter promotion The flock of elite sprinters – which also include veterans Rohan Browning and Bree Rizzo (nee Masters) – has pushed excitement in Australian athletics to extreme levels. The Maurie Plant meet in Melbourne last month sold out for the first time in two decades, and the Australian team won a record 14 medals at last year's under-20 world championships. The crop of middle distance runners is as promising as the sprinters, and teenagers Cameron Myers and Claudia Hollingsworth are already elite performers who are set to be standard-bearers in the run-up to Brisbane. Those in field events have already demonstrated to their track peers that Olympic medals are possible. High jumpers Nicola Olyslagers and Eleanor Patterson shared the podium at both the Paris Games as well as at the world indoors last month, while discus thrower Matthew Denny and pole vaulter Nina Kennedy – both who have chosen not to compete in Perth – are among the world's best in their events. The spotlight at nationals will also be shared with para-athletes, as James Turner looks to break the 100m T36 world record and local hope and T38 Paralympian Rhiannon Clarke races alongside rising star in the T36 classification, Mali Lovell, in the 100m and 200m. Kevan, who coaches Clarke, said he understood scheduling challenges faced by organisers but promotion should include para-athletes. 'You get Lachie Kennedy there, and you have Jimmy Turner next to him and they're interviewed together,' he said. 'This isn't para-athletics and able-bodied athletics, this is Athletics Australia and they're both parallel.' But he agreed Gout was driving interest in athletics unlikeanyone else, and described him making a 'once in a lifetime' impact on the sport. The 17-year-old has been presenting junior athletes at the venue with their medals in between training sessions in preparation for the event. 'We need to be good enough now to leverage how good this guy is, and the stuff that's around him, to bring the rest of the sport with it,' Kevan said.
