Records & Comebacks in Canberra - 26Jan2006-

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THIS REPORTS COURTESY OF THE IAAF WEBSITE WHERE IT WAS PUBLISHED FIRST, WITH PIX

Howe breaks Australian women’s Pole Vault record with 4.61m in Canberra

http://www.iaaf.org/news/Kind=2/newsId=33259.html

Thursday 26 January 2006

Kym Howe needed just two jumps to break the Australian women’s Pole Vault record, Jana Pittman won her 400m Hurdles comeback and Matt Shirvington cleared his own mental barrier to win the 100 metres in the first Telstra A-Series of 2006 held in Canberra, Australia, earlier today.

West Australian Howe, 25, who trained with Emma George when she vaulted a World record height of 4.60m in early 1999, opened today at 4.41m - a centimetre higher than the automatic qualifying entry standard for the last Olympic final which Kym was unable to clear in Athens.

Pittman powers to 54.81 400m Hurdles win in Canberra
(Getty Images)

Sydney Olympic silver medallist Tatiana Grigorieva also cleared 4.41m at her first attempt to secure second place but she failed at 4.50m and could only watch as Howe gave an exhibition clearing 4.61m at the first try.

Howe then packed away her pole, a precaution against injury with the 84th Telstra Australian Championships running next week from 2 to 5 February at Sydney Olympic Park. The nationals double as team selection trials for the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in March.

""It’s a huge relief,’’ Howe said. "Ever since Emma (George) used to train with us in Perth I’ve wanted to break her record and it has been a long time coming.”

Shirvington after 10.28 win in Canberra
(Getty Images)

Injury and fatiguing work in child-care has kept Howe down. She suggested she may have to retire after the Melbourne Games unless she can secure sponsorship to support her training.

"I’ve got the drive to be No.1 in Australia,’’ Howe declared. "I was so disappointed to finish second at the Manchester Commonwealth Games. I am tired of being No. 2 (to Grigorieva). My original plan was to give Melbourne a go and then retire but now I might have to think about Beijing (the 2008 Olympics).

"I think this year, more mentally, I knew I had it (a record jump) in me. Before I was a bit soft. I don’t think 4.80m or 4.90m is out of reach.’’

“Re-built” Pittman returns with a win

Pittman, 23, the youngest woman to win the World 400m Hurdles Championship in Paris in 2003, had her Olympic medal bid wrecked by knee surgery the following year and abandoned her title defence last year with a stress fracture in her spine.

It has been a sobering time for the precocious and gregarious Sydneysider but under the coaching of her British fiancé Chris Rawlinson she has rebuilt her endurance platform from which she launched her return to hurdling yesterday.
She won comfortably in 54.81 and looked capable of going much faster with closer opposition. Victoria’s Sonia Brito, on a comeback of her own, took second in 57.08sec with Canberra’s young hometown hero Lauren Boden, the national title-holder, third in 57.45.

“I am probably in the best shape I’ve ever been in but I haven’t raced,” Pittman said. “I was so nervous at the start my hands were absolutely jumpy. I haven’t run a 400 for seven months so I was just petrified.”

It was Pittman’s first 400m Hurdles since the Rome Golden League in July last year.

Shirvington bounces back too

Shirvington has suffered an even longer run of bad fortune, coming to the Paris World titles meet short of form and tired, a symptom subsequently diagnosed as glandular fever. Little has gone right on the track since then, but his disappointing form at the Helsinki World Championships shook him from his lethargy.

"I have had such a horrible last three years but it’s nice to be winning again,’’ Shirvington said after upsetting perhaps the best domestic men’s 100m field ever assembled.

Against the only headwind of the meet, “Shirvo” grabbed victory in 10.28sec (-2.3m/s ) from Nigeria-born Ambrose Ezenwa (10.29), Australian record-holder Patrick Johnson (10.30), Adam Miller (10.33), Daniel Batman (10.35) and national title-holder and Helsinki semi-finalist Joshua Ross (10.35). Six men separated by 7/100ths of a second all in Commonwealth Games B-qualifying times into a stiff breeze.

Batman, a descendent of John Batman who brokered a pact with the indigenous land owners and staked out the territory upon which Melbourne would be built, later showed signs of what may have been but for the headwind.

The powerful Sydney sprinter, who is married to Australia’s first Aboriginal Olympic gold medallist (1996 Atlanta hockey winner Nova Peris), backed up to win the 200m in 20.29 (wind assistance 2.4m/s) from Ezenwa (20.59) and Miller (20.72).

‘Budgie’ is grounded

A five-time national 100m champion, Shirvington said his fightback was inspired by pole vaulter Paul “Budgie” Burgess who recovered from some lean years to clear 6-metres last year.

But Burgess failed to fly yesterday, no-heighting as 2001 Edmonton World Champion Dmitri Markov won a disappointing competition with a mere 5.35m from fellow West Australian Luke Vedelago and Victorian Olympian Steve Hooker (also 5.35m).

Australia’s “silver bullets” - the men’s 4x400m relay Athens Olympic runners-up - looks set to continue firing for some seasons to come after Athens anchor, South Africa-born Clinton Hill won the Canberra 400m in 45.06.

His personal best run in just his third 400m run of the new season establishes Hill as nominal favourite for the Melbourne Games one-lap race, while young Victorian Sean Wroe improved a whole second :eek: to run 45.35sec ahead of Perth’s Chris Troode (45.42). Athens relay member Mark Ormrod of Adelaide was fourth in 45.73.

Melbourne’s bald-headed Scott Martin won the Shot Put with a toss of 19.40m from Sydney’s Clay Cross (18.73m) as Athens Olympic finalist and Mardid World Cup second-placer Justin Anlezark finished only fifth with a second-round best of 17.90m.

Anlezark hyper-extended the finger he damaged in the Olympic final and passed his last three attempts as a precaution.

Perth’s Oliver Dzubiak hurled the Javelin 80.62m to defeat New Zealander Stuart Farquhar (77.76m) and Will Hamlyn-Harris (76.66m), while the horizonal jumps saw young winners in Sydney’s John Thornell (8.08m, wind +1.6m/s) and Adelaide’s Alwyn Jones (16.79m , wind +0.6m/s).

Thornell was scared to a personal best by an even younger North Queenslander, Robert Crowther, who equalled Thornell’s national under-20 record with a prodigious leap of 7.99m (wind +1.4m/s).

Queensland’s 100m Hurdles 2003 World Youth Champion, Sally McLellan, won a great treble yesterday in the 100m (11.41sec, wind +0.6m/s), 200m (23.36sec, wind + 0.6m/s) and her parade event, the hurdles in 13.17sec (wind +1.2m/s).

Tamsyn Lewis won yesterday’s 400m in 52.48 from fellow 800m starlet Caitlin Willis (52.75sec) and Annabelle Smith (52.85). Willis is the younger sister of 2003 World Cross-Country Champion Benita Johnson.

In all, 19 competitors recorded Athletics Australia’s stiff Commonwealth Games A-standard marks (including eight new names) and there were also a stunning 46 Games B-standard qualifying marks.

It was a tremendously heartening start to the annual Telstra A-Series and set the host national team on their way to what promises to be a highly competitive effort at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games.

Mike Hurst (Daily and Sunday Telegraph, Australia) for the IAAF

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Hollingsworth says games qualifying standard is just right
Posted at 7:54am on 27 Jan 2006

The High Performance Manager for Athletics New Zealand Eric Hollingsworth says the numbers that have set qualifying marks for the Commonwealth Games shows that their standards are not too difficult to achieve.

A couple of athletes have voiced their concerns about the standards after just missing out in recent months, however Hollingsworth says with 25 individuals already qualified heading into this weekend’s National Championships in Christchurch, he believes they’ve got it just right.

Javelin thrower Stuart Farquhar became the latest to set a games standard at the Canbera meeting yesterday.

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By Steve Larkin
CANBERRA, Jan 27 - Suddenly, there are understudies aplenty to the Pittman production.
Jana says she’ll be ready for centre stage when Melbourne is the Commonwealth’s sporting theatre.
But now there is also the Shirvington bandwagon - it has been rolling again for exactly 10.28 seconds.
And there is a cash-strapped childcare worker who set a Commonwealth record but may quit athletics because she can’t find a sponsor.
And a teenaged-Queensland sprinter who won four races at the Telstra A-Series meet in Canberra. Also a fleet of seriously competitive 400 metre runners.
In Canberra, Gold Coast-born 19-year-old Sally McLennan won the 100m hurdles, the 200m, and her heat and final of the 100m; while Clinton Hill, Sean Wroe and Chris Troode all clocked Games A-qualifiers in a fierce 400m.
Pole vaulter Kym Howe, who describes her childcare job as the worst paid job in the world'', broke Emma George's six-year Commonwealth record and then said sponsorship would determine if she had a post-Melbourne sporting career. All loom as a support cast in Melbourne to Pittman, who aims to replicate the 1986 Debbie Flintoff-King 400m and 400m hurdles gold medal double. Pittman has renewed focus after injury forced a seven-month absence from hurdling. The 23-year-old says hurdling is everything, absolutely everything you could possibly imagine’’ and is devouring books such as The Hurdler’s Bible and The Hurdler’s Guide to the Galaxy.
I'm prepared to do it this time, whereas I think two years ago I wasn't quite prepared for what I had to do,'' says Pittman, who won her hurdling comeback race in the nation's capital. Canberra could also be deemed the comeback race of Shirvington, whose bandwagon wobbled from glandular fever in 2003 and all but disappeared from the sporting map. Shirvington says the wheels finally fell off last year at the Helsinki world championships: Sluggish in a 4x100m relay heat, benched for the final. It was embarrassing a little bit but I had to do it,’’ Shirvington says.
I had to go through that. Helsinki was probably the indicator for me to start training properly.
I had to get through 2005 unscathed in terms of illness - it (Helsinki) was the trigger. It was embarrassing a little bit to go and be in such bad shape, but I wouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t done that.
Pretty much the day I got off the plane from Helsinki I started again and basically went from training a couple of days a week to training fulltime again, nine sessions a week.'' Shirvington says the glandular fever is gone: I expected to get rid of it in six weeks and it took me two and a half years.’’
The evidence is his 10.28 second triumph in Canberra, his best 100m time since 2003.
Aged 27, Shirvington says he has drawn inspiration from West Australian pole vaulter Paul Burgess, who improved 23cm last year to clear six metres - higher than anyone ever on Australian soil.
After overcoming injury, Burgess, at 26, is peaking and holds medal aspirations in Melbourne.
What has probably spurred me on the most is Paul Burgess, his performance last year particularly,'' Shirvington says. He is about the same age as me, he had a bad period and didn’t do much jumping for a long time, and then came out and jumped six (metres).
To me that was like 'it doesn't go anywhere, it's just a matter of tapping into it and doing it again, there is loads left'.'' Burgess is coached in Perth by Alex Parnov, the same coach as Howe, a 25-year-old vaulter who cleared 4.61m to set a Commonwealth record at the Canberra meeting she approached as just a bit of a trial’’.
My original plan after Athens (2004 Olympics) was give Melbourne a go and then retire, but hopefully I might get a sponsor so I might be able to continue now,'' Howe says. It all depends on the sponsors, if I can get a sponsor to help me then I will continue.’’
Australia’s track and field team for the Melbourne Games will be decided at selection trials in Sydney from Thursday.