Bay Sheffield results

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AUSTRALIA APPEARS TO BE THE ONLY PLACE ON THE PLANET COMPETING IN TRACK EVENTS OF LATE, OTHERWISE THIS ITEM WOULD NEVER GET POSTED (not by me anyways. kk)

28.12.2007
Tamsyn triumphant at Bay Sheffield
Tamsyn Lewis has ended 2007 on a winning note, taking out the 550m women’s handicap at the Bay Sheffield athletics carnival at Glenelg in Adelaide.

Lewis stormed home from the back mark (18m) on the Colley Reserve track to narrowly beat South Australian Kirsty Meekins (84m) and Victorian Alice Platten (38m) in one minute and 19.31 seconds.

“I’m in the best shape of my career and I just have to show that on the track,” Lewis told the Adelaide Advertiser after the race.

"I got my (Olympic) qualifiers while I was overseas last year and had a really good European season.

"I think I can at least make a final (in Beijing).

“Between now and then I’ll be training and I’ll still run for my club and I’ll do all the grand prix events.”

Lewis is a regular visitor to the Bay Sheffield carnival and the win is her third in nine visits. Her previous wins coming in the women’s 800m in 1999 and the 120m Backmarkers Invitation in 2004.

“I’ve been coming back for nine years because it’s such a great atmosphere and the crowd are so supportive,” she said.

“I might have to come across because I think he (boyfriend and Redbacks wicketkeeper Graham Manou) might be playing cricket for a bit longer than I’ll be running.”

Lewis told the Adelaide Advertiser that elite track and field athletes should compete domestically to raise the profile of the sport.

“I love to race and I think if you’re an elite track and field athlete in Australia then you have to run domestically to keep the sport alive,” she said.

"I think it’s really disappointing that there’s not a grand prix or national series meet in Adelaide when there’s one everywhere else.

“It would be great to have one here.”

Kate Mandalovic, who won the women’s 120m gift in 2005, took out the women’s 70m handicap off 4m ahead of Kim Letton (10.25m) and Alicia Wrench-Doody (5m).

Victorian Peter Dudkiewicz won the men’s 70m Glenelg Sprint off 6.25m , beating South Australian Dylan Hicks (6m), with Northern Territory veteran Shane Ezard (6.5m) third.

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Goodonya KitKat for posting it anyway.

Great run by Tamsyn, really hard to work hard and two solid races like this would be worth a week of training. Brought the crowd to their feet and was a real buzz around when she hit the line first.

The 121st Bay Sheff was won by Damian Tohl (10.50m), son of the 1981 winner Anthony, in a classic & exciting final. About 1.50m between first to sixth.

Here’s my race report I posted on a pro-running forum.

Putting my coaching hat aside and as a purist of the sport, what an outstanding event the 121st Bay Sheffield was. 15 well seeded heats with plenty of good man on man duels. With a good tail breeze for most of the heats, we ended up with 6 runners within 0.05 of each other inside 12.10 (12.03 to 12.08) and a seventh in Damian Tohl (after a break and going back to 9.50m) running 12.14. Heats were well drawn with no real hard luck stories from those who missed out on advancing to the semis.

Six well drawn semis with the two Victorians causing the major upsets with Clint Youlden knocking out Ian MacFarlane and Peter Dudkiewicz upsetting Mt Gambier Gift winner, Dale Woodhams. As the semis were being run a breeze sprang up and seemed to get stronger with each semi.

Brad Peters (10.0) won the first semi in 12.18 in a photo from Adam Burbridge (6.50). 3/1000 sec between Brad and Adam and it seemed the desperate throw on the line got Peters the verdict.

Damian Tohl (10.50) looked in danger mid race with John Jakeman (6.25) coming at him, but ran strongly to the line to win by about 1m in 12.23.

After a super impressive heat, Ian MacFarlane (6.25) looked a moral for the semi and seemed to have it in control with about 40m to go, but Clint Youlden (7.50) came again and seemed to run out the last 20m better to go to the line a winner by 1/4m in 12.30. Despite the big plunge on Robert Ballard it came unstuck in this semi with Rob running 3rd.

Alex Bubner (6.25) and Matt Pilkington (7.75) both ran 12.08 in their respective heats, suggesting this was going to be a very close race, but Bubner looked terrific running strongly through out to win impressively in 12.36. Weir was 2nd and Pilkington 3rd.

Probably the biggest upset was Peter Dudkiewicz’s (9.50) gutsy and desperate ‘lean’ to the line to just edge out Dale Woodhams. The Dude looked gone with 10m to go but found something extra when he had to. Extremely close but no doubt about the winner - probably 15 to 20cm between them. Wind had picked up which explained the 12.47 time.

Final semi saw Duncan Tippins (6.75) comfortably through by about 2m from the fast finishing Keith Sheehy (2.75) in 12.36.

Set up for a classic final with no clear cut favourite.

RED Alex Bubner (SA) 6.25
WHITE Duncan Tippins (SA) 6.75
BLUE Clint Youlden (VIC) 7.50
YELLOW Peter Dudkiewicz (VIC) 9.50
GREEN Brad Peters (QLD) 10.00
BLACK Damian Tohl (SA) 10.50

Unfortunately for the first time I can remember, Duncan Tippins uncharacteristically broke and went back a metre. It reminded me of the great Steve Proudlock breaking in the 1981 Stawell Gift final. Like Dunc, Steve was not a noted breaker, but sometimes these things happen…

From the restart Peters started well heading Tohl and setting up a two man war out in front. Peters seemed to have him but momentum seemed to change around the 100m mark and Tohl must have sensed Peters coming back to him. Bubner also started well and had all but Peters and Tohl covered by the 70m mark. Youlden and the Dude were never far away but couldn’t quite get contact with the front two. Tohl went through the line powerfully while Peters seemed to feel for it a bit and really there was very little in it. Having watched the replay several times, the black does seem to shade the green a stride out. Classic final - exciting to watch regardless of who you were barracking for.

Whilst YGTS had an ordinary day on the track, our syndicate won the Calcutta, having bought the Tohl heat (which we drew), which was knocked down for $440. The Brad Peters heat went for the biggest price of $700. Rob Ballard’s heat went for $560.

I was fortunate enough to watch a young bloke scorch down the back straight of a 4 x 100m relay out at SANTOS 3 weeks ago, setting Flinders up for a good win in the State Relay titles. That run by Damian Tohl where he made up metres on the other relay runners was genuinely quick and had me thinking, maybe I had just seen the 2007 Bay Sheff winner.

Well deserved success to Damian & Anthony Tohl and a great win for the sport and for a family that has been a great contributor to the SAAL for nearly 4 decades.

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After a super impressive heat, Ian MacFarlane (6.25) looked a moral for the semi and seemed to have it in control with about 40m to go, but Clint Youlden (7.50) came again and seemed to run out the last 20m better to go to the line a winner by 1/4m in 12.30. Despite the big plunge on Robert Ballard it came unstuck in this semi with Rob running 3rd.

Plunge on Ballard? He is in his mid 40s. Which is a great achievement to still be competitive at that age. But I am not sure if I would want to depart with my cash so easily.

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Youngy,
great report thanks. :slight_smile: You have added a new dimension to the forum and I for one am now interested in the pro running results. What forum did you post that on?

Have you got any runners coming over to Wanganui? I wish I didn’t have a meet that weekend as I would seriously consider going. I’ll be interested to see how it goes as next year they will be hosting NZ Masters Games at the same time and if they run it again I may well go up. Alternatively if it goes well I may see about trying to arrange one down south, Queenstown would be perfect! http://www.queenstown-nz.co.nz/
It is the adventure capital of NZ (the world?) and has direct flights from Sydney. I’m pretty confident if Wanganui is a success they would be keen.

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Young or anyone else - are there any photo’s of the mens final?

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It was very very close, the pictures would be really good!

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Rob Ballard was backed from 25-1 into 10’s before they had another crack and he was turned into 6-1. The punter who I believe is very close to the Ballard camp, was going to win around $5000 if Rob won the Bay Sheffield for an outlay of about $300. I think the bookmaker bought the Ballard heat in the calcutta to cover the bet.

Rob has been in Indonesia for 8 months as the sprint coach of the Indonesian athletic squad. He’s 43 years old and in terrific shape.

I have no-one going to Wanganui. We have one of our bigger SA meets for the year on the same weekend.

I am off to Burnie (Tasmania) tomorrow, to have a look at the Burnie Gift on New Year’s Day.

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Great effort for a guy 43 yo to be still running 11.0s or close to that. He also overcame Graves disease which almost blinded him.

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Hi Youngy,

There was a Ballard who was coaching in Indonesia (I posted a report on Indo sprinters doing well). I’m assuming it was the same Ballard. Can you check it out with him if you see him again? It would be of interest to me.

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G’day KK,

Yeah I spoke to Rob Ballard briefly on Friday at the Bay Sheffield and he told me about his role in Indonesia. He stood out in his red Indonesian tracksuit. He said he has been going well with it and the athletes under his charge had improved significantly winning more medals at some Asian games than they had before. He has one fellow in 10.2 shape, much quicker than he had run before.

Ballard was 2nd in the 1986 Stawell Gift off 7.0m (21 years ago!). He was also 2nd in the 70m that year.

After Rob returned from the Seoul Olympics where he ran in the 400m Relay, he ran in the Brunswick Gift in Victoria. Rob was the first registered professional runner to compete in the Olympics and then run in a pro race. Up until 1986, pro runners were not able to run for Australia.

His first start after returning from Seoul was at the Brunswick Gift in December 1988. I won the Brunswick Gift off 6.50m, beating Rob Ballard (2.50m) who was 2nd. (Ballard had beaten me in the semi final, but I ran better in the final…:wink: )

Ballard then went to Burnie where he easily won his (1989) Burnie Gift semi final off 2.0m. However he was disqualified as the judges deemed Rob broke the tape with his arm. 2nd place in Ballard’s semi - Anthony Grima was promoted to the final instead and ended up winning the Burnie Gift.

Although he missed winning the Gift at Stawell, he went on to win many races including three backmarker invitation races at Stawell, a Wangaratta Gift, a Botany Bay Gift - when it was worth $50,000 to the winner; and the Temora Gift last year.

On Friday, running off 9.0m, Ballard won his Bay Sheff heat in 12.24 before being run out in the semi. As Sharma says, it’s an incredible effort to be still running that fast at 43 years of age. I don’t know if he runs in Masters Games, but there would be few 40+ athletes in the world who could match him over 100m.

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Yes, he’s probably running as fast now as he ran in Seoul :rolleyes: , nah, I remember him in Seoul. Darren Clark told me he (Ballard) told him (Clark) to stop fooling around and that he (Clark) was lucky even to be there. Clark told him to lighten up and reminded him that had it not been for Clark’s return from injury in the nick of time for Seoul, Australia would not have sent a 4x4 relay and Ballard would not have become an Olympian. Silly fellow. Clark finished fourth in the individual final and ran the fastest split in the relay final. Can’t recall how Ballard ran in his relay and neither can anyone else.
:stuck_out_tongue:
But great that he is making a go of coaching, especially in Indonesia which would be an interesting and challenging place to coach athletes.

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12.24 from 9m is equal to 9.07 ms average velocity. If applying that over 100m, it equals 11.02 and add .05 because the distance is from the front block. That equals 11.07 for the 100m on grass. You would be hard-pressed to find any 43 yo on the planet who can do that.

When Rob won Temora he said to me that he adjusted his training for more tempo, alternated with speed specific work. Sound familiar? He felt that if he trained the way he did these days back in the 80s then his pbs on the track would read up much better. Maybe the CF forum needed to be around in the 80s.

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Hard pressed, yes. But Willie Gault would blow him up.

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Gault doesn’t count …he’s too good:p

He is in the 45-49 age group and his 3 best times in 07 were
10.88 (1.3)
10.89 (1.5)
10.89 (1.2)

next best in that age group was 11.14 :eek:

In the 40-44 age group 11 ran 11.05 or quicker

http://www.mastersathletics.net/100-metres-Men-Masters-Athletics-World.272.0.html

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i was scrolling through the posts, hoping no one had said this and i’d get to be the the enlightener.

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How do you even get that conversion?

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111/12.24/100 +.05. obviously is a valid conversion everytime all the time. :confused:

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Is it fair to compare a kiku grassed track with some undulation to a flat rubber etc based track when assessing relative performances?

I’m with sharmer.

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111m/12.24= 9.07ms
100m/9.07ms = 11.02 s
add 0.5 because the in the Pros- the front block is the front line.

THE MATHS IS NOT THAT HARD! Its not advanced quantum mechanics.

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12.24 for 111m ( 11.07) on grass is faster or at worst very similar to 10.88 +1.3 on synthetic.