Athletics: Lukes repeats Kepler Challenge win

Dunedin's John Winsbury's hopes of winning the Kepler Challenge were dashed at Te Anau on Saturday when he finished fourth in the gruelling 60km mountain race.

Winsbury (33), a physiotherapy student at the University of Otago, was hoping to turn his second place last year into a win in his third attempt at the race.

He was sixth in his first attempt in 2006 and second last year. But he drifted badly over the second half of the race and finished a distant fourth in 5hr 13min 45sec.

The race was won for the second year in a row by Christchurch-based Martin Lukes in 4hr 56min 24sec. He was followed home by dark horse Sam Wreford (Timaru) 5hr 03min 04sec in his debut and Tony Fattorini (Sydney) who repeated his 2007 third placing in 5hr 06min 50sec.

Hiroki Ishikawa (Japan) was fifth in a time of 5hr 17min 58sec. He originally predicted a record breaking 4hr 30min finish but the Fiordland mountains proved more rugged than he had anticipated.

It did not look promising for Winsbury when he reached the halfway point at the Iris Burn Hut in fourth place and was one minute behind the leading bunch. He was feeling the pressure and drifted back from the leading bunch over the second 30km.

Fattorini, who led up the hill and took the King of the Mountain title in 1:08:57, led through Iris Burn. Wreford (25), who was running his first Kepler Challenge, and Lukes were on his heels.

Wreford stole the lead from Fattorini during the run down the Iris Burn Valley and at Rainbow Reach, 10km from the end, he was still in front. The experienced Lukes took the lead shortly after that and applied the pressure to the finish, to win by 6min 40sec.

He enjoyed the cat-and-mouse of the event and said that as an older runner he would always need to be a bit more wily than the younger runners.

Wreford hit the wall 15km from home and had to walk- jog the last part of the race.

Fattorini, in third place again, ran a minute faster than his 2007 time. He expected to fade in the second half of the race.

The women's event was also a repeat of last year with Chigaya Mase (Tokyo) shaving 10min off her 2007 winning time when she finished in 6hr 6min 26sec. Eveline Coombe (Wanaka), who was originally from Germany, last ran the Kepler Challenge in 2001 when she finished second in 6hr 11min. This year she finished second again in 6hr 20min 51sec after winning the Queen of the Mountain in 1:24:35. In the intervening years she has had two children.

Jean Beaumont (Porirua) was third in 6hr 22min 34sec to beat her best time by more than 20min.

Christchurch mathematics teacher Phil Costley, the race record holder in the Kepler Challenge, shaved 2 min off the Luxmore Grunt race record with his winning time of 1hr 52min 30sec. Michael Wakelin (Dunedin) was second in 1hr 57min 14sec and late entrant Mike Walker third in 2hr 13 min 13sec.

The top women runners in the Luxmore Grunt were Debbie Rankin (Invercargill) 2hr 27min 46sec, Marian Baxter (Dunedin) 2hr 43min 55sec and Korina Somerville (Winton) 2hr 44min 04sec.