Top javelin throwers to meet

Press, 20 December 1985, Page 22

Top javelin throwers to meet

By

ROD DEW

New Zealand’s two worldclass javelin throwers, John Stapylton-Smith (Canterbury) and Mike O’Rourke (Auckland), will clash for the first time this season in the Technical open invitation meeting at Queen Elizabeth II Park tomorrow evening.

And if conditions are suitable, it is highly likely that both men will exceed the Edinburgh Commonwealth Games qualifying distance of 79m for the second time this summer. Already, they are being hailed as two of New Zealand’s finest medal prospects for the Edinburgh Games next year. Stapylton-Smith exceeded 81m last Saturday in a performance which suggests he is rapidly building up for a really big throw. O’Rourke, after two seasons of relative relaxation, signalled his return to the fore with a Games qualifying throw a fortnight ago. O’Rourke is the reigning Commonwealth Games champion, a title he won at Brisbane four years ago. He also holds the national record at 90.58 m, set in Auckland in 1983. But for the last two years the tall Canterbury thrower has dominated the event in New Zealand, and had considerable success even further afield.

Stapylton-Smith, the elbow injury which threatened to end his career now well behind him, has won the New Zealand championship for the last two seasons, and in June won the Pacific Conference Games javelin gold medal with a mighty throw of

87.28 m. He is slowly edging closer to O’Rourke’s record and this season might well be ready for his first 90m effort.

Another of Canterbury’s Pacific Conference Games gold medallists, Peter Renner, will have his first serious run of the summer in the 5000 m on Saturday. He faces stern competition from Russel! Haswell (Auckland), a 1500 m runner who has just stepped up to the longer distance, and such accomplished Canterbury distance men as Dave Burridge, Don Greig, John Gilbert, Tom. Birnie and David Drummond. Gilbert is the current New Zealand junior champion over this distance. The women’s 3000 m will be an all-Canterbury affair but no less interesting because of this. Mary O’Connor, Anne Marie Tweedie, and Wendy Renner, all candidates for the next New Zealand cross-country team for the world championships, are likely to fight out the finish. All will be hoping for fast times after a month of being restricted to the grass track on the No. 2 ground at the park. The high jump clash between the national champion, Roger Te Puni (Wellington), and a former champion, Terry Lomax (Canterbury), has increased in its intensity since the brilliant 2.12 m leap by Lomax at Dunedin last week-end.

Lomax, recently returned

to Christchurch after two years in Auckland, is clearly in the best form of his career and ready to improve on his personal best of 2.15 m. Te Puni holds the national record at 2.18 m set at the Pacific Games, and needs to increase this by another centimetre to qualify for the Games.

There seems little doubt that both jumpers, and maybe even the rapidly progressing Canterbury jumper, Keith Olds, will have the bar at 2.19 m before the end of the competition tomorrow.

Rhys Dacre (Canterbury), who has spent the last six months at Utah State University on a gridiron football scholarship, is back for the holidays and intends to contest both the 100 m and 200 m tomorrow.

He won the national 100 m crown earlier this year and will race against the talented young Waikato sprinter, Dale McClunie, who finished less than half a stride behind him. McClunie went on to win the 200 m crown and is widely regarded as one of this country’s finest sprint prospects.

Dacre’s athletics aspirations have been put aside in the interests of football, and this is a great pity because he, too, would otherwise have been a strong candidate for the Games.

Murray Gutry (Waikato), Shane Downey (Auckland) and Jonathon Moyle (Auckland) are other top names in the sprint fields. Gutry, the national 400 m champion, will not contest this event, more is the pity. A contest between him and the talented Canterbury man, Darren Dale, would have been a great drawcard.

In any event, Dale will have top-class competition from the likes of Scott Bowden (Canterbury), recent winner of the national secondary schools’ championship, and Paul Cuff

(Auckland), runner-up to Gutry in the national final last season. Also in the field will be Chris Rogers (Waikato), Kevin Philpot (Waikato) and Blair Ward (Otago), the national colts champion two years ago. The women’s sprint promises to be just as entertaining. Andrea Wade (Auckland) and Bev. Peterson (Canterbury), who were first - and second in the national 100 m final this year, will race again over this distance. Morag McMillan ■ (Waikato) and Lynette Stock (Canterbury) are other performers in the field. ;