What an incredible start to the new season's competition. The pre-season warm-up meet held on October 7 gave us some indication that several months of lockdown had not in any way dampened the enthusiasm of our club members to get out onto the track and start coming up with some performances.
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The reality proved to be quite an eye-opener. Well-established records began to tumble like they had no importance at all. The first was young Callum Rann in the U16M 400m who smashed the 26-year-old record set by Victor Costible back in 1994 of 53.5sec to establish a new record of 51.29sec.
Tierney Dunne who is normally a 100m, 200m runner somehow or another ended up starting a 400m race and broke the previous record set in 2002 by running 59.14sec.
After an 18-year absence, Skye York in the W30-39 class had two bites of the cherry by setting a new 400m record of 64.97sec and a new 100m record of 14.20sec.
Mum Nicole McHenry in the W40-49 class set a new 100m record of 14.40sec.
In the 1km event, Patrice Sivills shave off 4 secs from his own record to set a new time of 2min 55.78sec and Adrian See in the M40-49 class smashed the previous time by more than a minute to clock 3min 02.41sec.
Long-term member Christine Shaw, W60-69 regularly treks from the Southern Highlands to attend our meets set a new javelin record of 26.15m.
The record smashing didn't stop there. In the next week's meet young discus talent Chelsy Wayne who is not yet 14 threw a sub orbital discus an enormous 38.00m annihilating the previous record by 5 plus metres
Our club is quite pleased to see young Jackie Lenartowics back in club colours. Now competing in the U18W class Jackie broke the previous hammer record by almost 5 metres to score a hefty 35.26 metres.
In the following week Adrian See M40-49 wasn't content to just have the 1km record, but broke his own established 800m record by 5 secs to set a new time of 2min16sec.
Mitchell O'Neill competing in Open Class men's is a spectacle to watch. He hasn't even commenced his speed program for this year and yet he has set a new electric Open Men's 200m record of 21.97sec. That time would have won him the State B-final held earlier this year.
In the days of manual timing former club member James Grimm, had a manually recorded time of 21.3 for this event set back in 2012. James then went on to represent Australia at the Oceania Games and won the 200m in that event.
The interclub events have wasted no time in getting started. Competitor numbers are limited due to COVID regulations, and so event registrations will close once the venue limit is reached.
The first major carnival attended by our club was the Nepean meet on October 17 held at the Blacktown Athletics centre.
Tentatively back after recovering from a fracture last year, 14-year-old Delta Amidzovski contested the Open Women's long jump leaping to 5.91 metres to come 4th. She was first in the 200m hurdles clocking 28.27 seconds, which was 1.48 seconds in front of second and was 8th in the Open Women's 100m zipping down the track in 12.25sec. There are a lot of us in the club and in her social groups that hope that these pleasing results will lead to the start of a successful athletics season for her.
Young 14-year-old Nat Carroll contested a massive field in the open class 100m and came up with a very respectable 12.40sec for his effort, and middle distance workhorse Olivia Sivills contested the Open 3000m Mixed Male and Female event clocking a time of 11:52.50.
Last Saturday some of our members attended two of the interclub carnivals available.
Both carnivals at Bankstown and Illawong were held in atrocious conditions. It was impossible to be able to get quick times. At Bankstown, Olivia backed up her previous week's Nepean effort to run a national qualifying time for the 2km Steeplechase by coming 4th in 7min 45sec. Kembla Joggers friend Ruby Phillips came second in the 3km Steeplechase with a time of 12.28.97sec.
Teammate Tayissa Buchanan contested the division 1 open women's 1500m coming up against some very hot talent in that event, and ran a very respectable 4.47.06. Thomas Noakes in the M17 class came first in Div 2 men's Open javelin with a 49.27m (Oh so close to that 50m), and a first in Div 2 men's pole vault with a lofty 3.70m, .50m in front of second.
At Illawong the speed meet was held in a large puddle. However James McPaul and Jedd Randall braved the miserable conditions to race against the fastest guys in greater Sydney.
Although out of the places James clocked a 7.30sec in the 60m and 22.91 in the 200m. Jedd contested three events clocking 7.70sec in the 60m, 12.03sec in the 100m and 24.38 in the 200m.
Congratulations to all athletes for such fantastic efforts
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