Evening meeting

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33741, 14 January 1975, Page 24

Evening meeting

The Ashburton Amateur Athletic Club’s evening meeting tomorrow has become a virtual mini-inter-national meeting with the appearance of the five members of the Japanese team for the New Zealand Games, Rodney Dixon, bronze medallist in the 1500 metres at the Munich Olympic Games, the New Zealand women’s javelin champion, Sandra MeGookin, and Trevor Cochrane. the Canterbury sprint champion.

As well as these competitors there will be other leading Canterbury and South Canterbury athletes. A probable starter at this stage is the New Zealand Games’ team’s women’s high jumper, Sheryl Rudd, of Christchurch.

The meeting will begin at 6.30 p.m. with the women’s high jump, and this will feature the two Japanese jumpers — M. Sone and M. Inaoka. The high jump record for Japan is 1.82 m (or sft 11 jin), compared with New Zealand’s best of sft 7in.

At 7 p.m., the New Zealand and Japanese javelin champions, Sandra McGookin and M. Takasaka, will meet for the first time.

Dixon, who is working hard on the come-back trail after an operation two

months ago, will figure in one of the feature events of the meeting when he races against Cochrane in the 800 metres at 7.15 p.m. Cochrane. Ashburton-bom and in excellent form during his games preparations, has proved outstanding over 800 metres, in addition to his sprint distances which earned him Commonwealth Games selection last year. At 7.45 p.m., Y. Hamada, ranked eighth in the world in [the marathon last year with a time of 2hr 13min 4.2 sec, and T. Koyama, ranked seventh in the world in the 3000 m steeplechase, will meet in the 5000 m against Canterbury and Ashburton distance, runners.

As well as the feature events there will also be other 100 m, 200 m, and 800 m events for all grades, as well as additional long jump and javelin events.