Words: Bob Snow – OAA statistician
Men’s Javelin

The Senior Men’s Javelin managed to give the Australian favourite, Nash Lowis, a good victory with his throw of 79.67m, but the top Islander – PNG’s Lakona Gerega – who finished in 4th position behind three Australians, threw the 800g Javelin 66.73m to break his own National Record that he set in Mini Games in Saipan in 2022. Lakona narrowly beat Donny Tuimaseve (SAM) one of his main Island rivals who threw 65.76m. In 6th position was Fiji’s Jone Vosabalavu who had a distance of 62.38m. The Javelin is a popular Pacific Islands’ event.

Women’s 200 metre

The Senior Women’s 200m Final was sensational and extremely close. We must all thank technology for the wonderful Fully Automatic Timing.

Torrie Lewis (AUS) won the final in 23.14 seconds. The silver went to Mia Gross (AUS) in 23.51 with the bronze going to Riley Day (AUS) in 23.63 seconds. In 4th position was Georgia Hulls (NZL) in 23.66 seconds and in 5th was Leonie Beu (PNG) also with 23.66 seconds. The 4th and 5th positions were then worked out to 1/000th of a second, and the result was Georgia’s time was 23.652 seconds and Leonie’s time was 23.653 – 1/1000th of a second slower. Got to love technology. My first stopwatch in the 1970’s was accurate only to 1/5th of a second. Well before those new watches that could go to 100th of a second!

Relay Story

On the final day of competition there were four Swedish Relays for the U16 and U20 Teams. What a great idea to have them part of a Senior Competition, with many excited teams taking part. The Swedish Relay has four runners, starting at the 200m mark, and running 100m, 200m, 400m with the anchor leg running 400m.

Can we have some more Relay Meets in which we have a much larger range of events than we now have – that is the 4 x 100m, 4 x 400m, and mixed 4 x 400m.

Our sport loves innovation and this would be a wonderful new series of events to be considered.
Go for it. Our sport needs to innovate to survive in this modern sporting world. A possible event for the next Oceania Cup meet.

800 Metre

The Senior Women’s 800m Final was “convincingly won” by New Zealand, who filled 3 of the top four places. The winner was Alison Andrews-Paul (NZL – 2:03.94). Scholastica Herman (PNG) was the best of the four Islanders in the Final with her 5th position in the time of 2:14.58.

The Senior Men’s 800m was also dominated by the athletes from Australia (1st, 2nd & 3rd) and New Zealand (4th & 5th). The winner was Peyton Craig in the time of 1:46.33, marginally ahead of Luke Boyes (1:46.39). First Islander was PNG’s Lot Samare, a relative newcomer to Team PNG, with a personal best time of 1:53.92 to finish in 6th position.