Athletics: First year as senior, four titles in bag

Four from four. Daniel Balchin (Caversham) emerged as the king of middle distance running at the Otago championships.

In his first year as a senior athlete, Balchin (20) won the 800m, 1500m, 3000m and 5000m titles.

"I'm happy with that," he said. "They have all been tough races."

He added the 5000m at the Caledonian Ground on Saturday with a personal-best time of 14min 47.36sec from Dougal Thorburn (Ariki), 14min 51.87sec, and Callan Moody (Ariki), 14min 54.69sec.

It was 9sec faster than he had run before, which was remarkable in a strong southerly wind blasting the back straight. Moody also ran a personal best by four seconds.

There were still six runners in the front bunch when six laps were completed in 7min 9sec.

They were lapping between 72sec and 74sec at this stage. Two runners were dropped on the seventh lap and Tony Payne (Caversham) fell off the pace in the ninth lap.

"I just tried to stick with the leading bunch," Balchin said. "We took turns taking laps into the strong back straight wind."

The pace had slowed to 75sec on the 10th lap when Thorburn gingered up the pace and ran 70sec. He was still leading at the bell and maintained that lead until passed by Balchin with 260m to go. He had been developing his speed at the end of races and it showed in the last 400m, which he ran in 60sec.

Shauna Pali (Hill City), the head girl at Kavanagh College, won the women's race in 17min 54.34sec.

It was a personal-best time by 25sec and she was 2min ahead of Megan Balchin (Leith).

The big upset of the day came when Timaru schoolteacher Kellie Palmer (Canterbury University) beat Rebekah Greene (Hill City) in the women's 1500m.