Joe Beamish (Hill City) booked a flight to Sydney with victory in the Otago senior men's 3000m steeplechase championship at the Caledonian Ground yesterday.
Beamish (18) needed to meet the standard required for the Australian junior championships next month and did that with his time of 10min 6.07sec.
A qualifying time for Sydney was just one of three goals Beamish had on his mind going into the race. The others were his previous best of 10min 13sec and to break through the Otago squad standard of 9min 47sec.
He has just returned from the Young Olympians tour of the North Island, in which he recorded a personal best for his other discipline, the 1500m, clocking 4min 9sec in Wellington.
With his high school years behind him now, Beamish has opted for a gap year, planning to focus on training and gym work in order to get his times down.
His next goal is to break 16min on Thursday in the Otago 5000m championships. That would also give him entry into the 5000m in Sydney. His previous best is 16min 4sec achieved on the road.
Charlotte Cahill (Ariki), a 3000m convert, won the senior women's 3000m steeplechase title by maintaining her game plan of maintaining a steady even pace with a strong final lap.
Cahill (17), a year 13 pupil at Columba College, finished in a smart 12min 29.15sec.
A promising 1500m runner, Cahill decided to give steeplechase a go at the Otago-Southland secondary schools championships early last year, for something different.
Her success was immediate and she surprised by winning the title. She followed this with a silver medal at the South Island schools meeting a week later, and at the same meeting won bronze in the 1500m.
Cahill finished fifth in the senior girls steeplechase at the national secondary school championships in December. She hopes to defend her Otago-Southland steeplechase title and make it a double at the South Island championships.
Kylie Lyders (Taieri) won the junior women's 2000m steeplechase title in an impressive 8min 8.67sec.
Lyders, a year 12 pupil from Lawrence Area School, made a fast start and battled with stitch over the final 800m.
Wilson Mitchell (Taieri), a year 11 pupil from John McGlashan College, won the junior men's 2000m title in 7min 10.25sec.
Mitchell had targeted a sub-7min going into the race, but began to tie up a little over the final 800m.
Larissa Dyke (Taieri) made a welcome return to the sprint events after a being sidelined with a stress fracture 12 months ago.
Dyke (28) showed good acceleration out of the blocks and momentum to the line, to clock a confidence-boosting 12.47sec in marking her return in the 100m.
Four New Zealand records were broken at the Caledonian Ground yesterday.
Anna Grimaldi (Taieri) broke two women's AWD F47 records in the long jump (4.69m) and 200m (28.92sec). In the long jump, she is just 31cm short of the Commonwealth Games qualifying mark for Glasgow.
World masters 400m champion Liz Wilson (Hill City) broke the New Zealand masters aged 50 to 54 200m record with a time of 27.09sec.
Tori Peters (Taieri) broke the junior women's aged 19 javelin record by 48cm with a throw of 49.98m.
