Words: Bob Snow
One of the events that is part of the Masters’ Championship, is the Throws Pentathlon. When New Caledonia was at its peak with throwing competitions in the Pacific Games, this was an event that they staged annually. It was well-known Pacific wide and attracted many good throwers from other nations and even Australia and New Zealand.
What a great competition to encourage in the Islands of the Pacific Ocean Region to raise the status of the throws in ALL nations – large and small. The events are the Shot Putt, Discus, Javelin, Hammer Throw and the Weight. If you do not have “the weight” then you could have your own version with the four outdoor championship events. Just use the World Athletics’ Scoring Tables to rank the athletes. It encourages athletes to try throwing events apart from the speciality, and you will be surprised at how versatile your throwers can become. New Caledonia perfected the art – to good “gold medal” effect. Those without a throwing cage for the Hammer could have an Athletics’ Throws Triathlon – no swimming required.
Get some of the runners involved and you might have a new group of potential Heptathletes and Decathletes.
As part of the Masters’ Competition at the Oceania Championships, the Cross Country was an important feature of the programme.
How many of the Pacific Islands have regular cross-country competitions? While they might be popular in some parts of the Islands’ region, they should be the backbone of the distance running programme for most nations. That and a regular programme of road running that was dovetailed with a good distance programme on the track.
In the Women’s 1500m, New Zealand has a medal sweep with the winner being Laura Nagel (4:22.10), but in the battle of the Islanders for positions 4 and 5, this time Scholastica herman (PNG – 4:46.94) got the better of long-distance Honiara victor, Nathania Tan (NMI – 5:04.28). In the next few years expect a good continuing battle between these athletes.
As expected, the top Island athlete in the Men’s 1500m Final was Fiji’s Yeshnil Karan (3:58.65) to take the “Island Honours” from Guam’s Hugh Kent (4:02.92) and PNG’s Aquila Turalom (4:03.66).
Ten Islands’ Men qualified for the semi-final of the Men’s 100m. It will be very hard for them to progress to the Final, and even harder to win a medal with the strong Australian runners – Rohan Browning, Joshua Azzopardi and Sebastian Sultana most likely to fight out the podium finishes with New Zealand’s Tiaan Whelpton.
Nine Islands’ Women qualified for the semi-final of the Women’s 100m, with three from PNG, and two each for Fiji and Guam with Vanuatu and the Cook Islands one each.
Gold medal winner in the 400m Hurdles in the Honiara Pacific Games, Daniel Baul, finished in 4th position in the Final here in the Oceania Championship. His Suva time of 52.43 was marginally faster than his Honiara time of 52.75 seconds. William Peka
(PNG) was second in Honiara in the time of 52.86 seconds. In Suva he finished with a time of 52.88 seconds.
There was a great Senior Men’s High Jump competition with an Australian medal sweep. First was Yual Reith (2.28m) followed by Roman Anastasios (2.25m) and Joel Baden (2.25m). Yual is originally from South Sudan and is another great addition to the diversity if Australian Athletes – and indeed in many sports in Australia.
Yual is the current Australian National Champion, and his personal best is 2.30m set in Melbourne this year.