Athletics: High standard set in race walking

Daniel Lord (South Canterbury) is poised to take race walking back into the limelight in New Zealand and could follow the late Norman Read on to the Olympic podium.

Lord (18), a first year physical education student at the University of Otago, demonstrated his skills with a superb 2km race walk at the Caledonian Ground on Saturday.

He won the men's 2km walk in a personal best time of 8min 14.83sec in the best exhibition of race walking seen in Dunedin for 16 years.

Lisa Mathieson (Hill City) set a senior women's 3000m record of 14min 00.80sec in 1994.

Lord was competing in the senior walk that was held in conjunction with the Otago children's athletics championships at the weekend.

He led the mixed field out strongly from the start of the five-lap race and his progressive 400m times were 1min 38sec, 3min 16sec, 4min 54sec, 6min 34sec and a final time of 8min 14.83sec.

Lord came to Dunedin with a big reputation after winning 15 national club titles.

For the past three years he has won the open boys 3km title when representing Timaru Boys High School at the New Zealand secondary schools championships.

Lord has also performed with distinction on the international scene and won the gold medal in the 5km walk at the Pacific Schools Games in 2008.

He was first in the 10km at the Trans Tasman meeting at Auckland nine days ago.

It was a personal best time by 3min in 46min 37sec and it qualified him for the world junior championships in Canada in July.

Roseanne Robinson (Hill City) was walking in the same race on Saturday and won the women's section in 9min 8.46sec.

It was a personal best time by 19sec.

The walkers were setting the standards but there was also a rejuvenation of the middle distance stocks in the men's 800m.

Glen Ballam (Southland) won an exciting race in 1min 54.75sec from Daniel Balchin (Caversham) 1min 55.66sec, Ben Jowsey (Hill City) 1min 56.35sec and Dougal Thorburn (Ariki) 1min 57.52sec.

The first lap on Saturday was run in 58sec and Ballam made his bid 300m out and was chased all the way home by Balchin.

It was an impressive effort by Balchin, who broke the 2min barrier for the first time and improved his time by a massive 5sec.

Jowsey improved by 2sec and broke his own Otago record for a 16-year-old.

Larissa Dyke (Taieri), who returned to the sport 18 months ago after having four years off for her university studies, was a convincing winner of the women's 100m in 12.70sec.

Fifteen-year-old Dean Rusbatch (Taieri) continued his dominant form when he won the shot put (12.67m) and discus (32.86m) in the boys aged 15 and 16 grade.

Jasmine Ng (North Otago) ran an Otago best performance of 13.76sec when she won the 11-year-old girls 100m.