The second day of the Championships, though held in the morning, still suffered from the Nga Puna Wai curse…wind! Despite this the athletes performed well, continuing on from the examples set the day before. There were, once again, a number of personal bests achieved in a range of events.

Both the winner and runner-up in the Men’s Discus used the good wind conditions to their advantage to achieve PB’s. Canterbury Decathlon Champion, Jared Neighbours (COBU) won with his throw of 40.79m from National Decathlon Champion, Max Attwell 39.07m.

The Women’s winner was Tatiana Kaumoana (Te Awamutu) with a season’s best of 48.72m with impressive consistency with all throws over 47.00m.

The two true High-Performance athletes, on show today, had mixed fortunes. In the other Throwing event of the day Tom Walsh (SCAN) used the opportunity for Competition training to win with his best throw of 19.22m. Hamish Kerr (COBU), although winning with his opening height of 2.08m, unfortunately had to withdraw at 2.13m due to a recurring injury to his take-off knee. Both athletes will be looking to perform well in excess of these marks in the main part of the season in the New Year.

In the second jumping event of the day, the Triple Jump, National Champion Andrew Allan (COBU) out leapt Canterbury record-holder Matt Walsh (COBU). Allan’s best of 13.75m was sufficient to defeat the short run-up 13.44m of Walsh. The M18 winner, Ethan Gow (SELW), jumped 13.37m, which would have placed third in the Open event.

Unfortunately, most of the athletes who ran the heats of the Women’s 200m did not take the opportunity to run the Final. The heat times were very tightly grouped with the best run of 26.06sec shared by training partners Fiona Morrison (COBU) wind -1.8m/s and Jordyn Blake (COBU) -0.5m/s, in separate heats. Julia Burnham (COBU) was pipped on the line in Morrison’s heat, running 26.07sec. The final was won by Rebecca Joubert (CANU) into a steady head wind, in 26.52sec.

World University Games representative, Anna Percy (COBU), ran within 0.36sec of her personal best in the 400m Hurdles, with a very strong victory in what was ostensibly a solo effort.

Perhaps the best race of the day was the anticipated clash over 800m between Daniel Roswell (CHAV) and Dylan Forde (COBU). Roswell took advantage of his freshness to boss Forde from the gun, opening out a 2m lead over the first 100m. His aggressive running meant that Forde needed to use reserves drained by his PB 400m a day previous to attempt to regain contact with the flying Roswell on the back straight. The effort and the gap proved too much and the Christchurch Avon athlete maintained his dominance through to the line, to take the title with an outstanding 1.7sec PB of 1:54.61. Forde would also be pleased, as his 2^nd place time of 1:55.87, was a season’s best.

Overall the Meeting, which has not been held for 2 years, proved that when a competition has a meaningful purpose i.e. as a Championship, athletes will lift their performances accordingly. It is hoped that those who could not or would not compete, will feel that it is a worthwhile early season opportunity in future.