Athletics: Men's middle-distance standards slipping in Otago

Callan Moody (Ariki) was pleased by the result, but there should not be any celebrations for Otago athletics with his winning time.

Moody (21) won his first Otago senior men's track title at the Caledonian Ground on Saturday when he beat Daniel Balchin (Caversham) in a desperate sprint finish in the 5000m.

Moody won in 14min 58.31sec from Balchin on 14min 58.37sec.

Tony Payne (Caversham) was third in 15min 26.85sec.

Most of the pace was a dawdle.

But Moody and Balchin both put their foot down to run the last 400m in 61sec.

The last 200m was covered in 28sec.

It was the fifth time this century that the 15-minute barrier had been broken with the best winning time being Ariki's Luke Hurring's 14min 50.86sec in 2008.

But it was a long way short of the Otago record of 13min 40.66sec held by Blair Martin (Leith) since 1998.

The record before that was held by David Rush (Leith) at 13min 52.36sec.

There should not be any complacency in the ranks of Otago's distance runners.

The standard has slipped.

Martin ran 14min 48sec as a 16-year-old, 14min 35.60sec when he was 19 and 14min 26.84sec when he was aged 20.

Going back over 40 years ago, 1988 Olympian John Campbell (Mornington) ran 14min 20sec for the three miles as a 16-year-old in 1965.

This equates to 5000m in about 14min 55sec.

Stuart Melville (Caversham) ran 14min 34.60sec when he won the New Zealand title at the old Caledonian Ground in 1975 and 1974 Commonwealth Games 10,000m champion Dick Tayler (Ariki) could easily break 14 minutes in a training run.

Conditions are different today.

There is a better and more sheltered track than at the old Caledonian Ground and the times should be faster.

On Saturday, the four leading runners were together when six laps were passed in 7min 19sec.

Lyndon Brown (Caversham) dropped back during the next lap.

Payne was dropped on the ninth lap and it was a cat-and-mouse affair until Balchin applied pressure on the 10th lap.

But the race was falling into the hands of Moody who had the superior sprint and was still in contact.

But he almost blew it, with a stuttering start to his final sprint from 250m out.

"I thought I had him at 200m but he came back and I had to put in an afterburner," Moody said.

"I rested too much around the bend. I should have been more decisive and gone all the way at 250m."

Balchin has always been known as a fighter and he closed the gap around the bend and almost caught Moody in the final 50m.

Thirty-nine-year-old New Zealand representative Shireen Crumpton (Hill City) had difficulty breaking away from Leith's Kirsty Morris (23) in the women's race before winning in 17min 40.43sec.

Morris was timed at 17min 47.63sec.

Alan Funnell (Leith) won the masters men's title in 17min 8.16sec and Sue Cuthbert (Leith) the masters women's title in 19min 10.98sec.

The standard of the men's middle and long-distance running in Otago is disappointing at the moment, but this is certainly not the case in women's running, as the talented Rebekah Greene (Hill City) demonstrated.

Greene (16), a pupil at St Hildas Collegiate, broke five Otago records when she won the women's 800m in 2min 10.01sec.

It was a personal best time by seven seconds and beat the Otago record of 2min 11.90sec for 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20-year-olds that Katrina Finn (Ariki) has held for the last seven years.

Greene tops the national rankings in her own 16 and under age group, is second in the women's aged 19 and under grade and the fourth-ranked senior woman.

The Otago senior women's record of 2min 4.1sec was run by Sylvia Potts in 1970.

The other Otago record on Saturday went to Fiona Harvey (Taieri) in the masters women's aged 50 to 54 javelin.

She beat the record standard of 20m with her six throws of 23.81m, 22.57m, 24.95m, 24.89m, 23.32m and 23.70m.

Another notable performance came in the men's shot put, won by New Zealand representative Jerram Huston (Taieri) with 14.50m, from club-mate Kieran Fowler, 13.91m.