The Oceania 20km Racewalking Championships will take place in Melbourne this Saturday. The fields are headlined by both defending Champions in 20km, in Olympic bronze Medalist Dane Bird Smith and Commonwealth Games Gold Medalist Jemima Montag.
Bird-Smith has already been selected for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games by Australia and has been training hard in his home base in Queensland. Whilst not having raced a Race-Walking event in the past year, he has shown form and fitness, by coming out and competing in the Queensland Shield Meet named in his honor, running the 400m in a respectable 50.88 seconds, but it was just outside his personal best of 48.99 set in 2010.
The Field for the Men’s 20km includes Multiple NZ Record Holder Quentin Rew, who has the qualifying time for the 50km event in Tokyo and Fijian Pramesh Prasad. Prasad, has been walking on the international level since the 1990’s. Rhydian Cowley has the qualifier for Tokyo but will be looking fro another good performance here. Kyle Swan and Declan Tingay will be wanting good results, as both are on the cusp of selection for the Australian Team for Tokyo.
The Women’s race sees Jemima Montag, face off against compatriot Katie Hayward and New Zealander Alana Barber. The trio are familiar to each other, having raced 4 times against each other. Montag and Hayward have two victories a piece, but Barber has been in good vein of form, with a record setting performance in New Zealand walking 1:37.45 at the Potts Classic in January.
Schedule:
20km – 8:00am
10km – 9:00am
5km – 10:00am
