Scatter starts campaign

Press, 12 June 1986, Page 40

Scatter starts campaign

Ry

ROD DEW

One of the two New Zealand representatives in the forthcoming Edinburgh Commonwealth Games 30km road walk, Graham Scatter, of Christchurch, leaves for England on Saturday in advance of the main New Zealand Games contingent. Scatter plans to contest the English 10,000 m track championship at Crystal Palace on June 21. Among his rivals in this event will be his training partner, Murray Day, who has been training and racing in England for the last four weeks. Day won the English 3000 m track championship in London a fortnight ago in a personal

best time of 12min 3s, and is the holder of the English 10,000 m crown, a title he won when he was in England last year. The pair will then compete in an international 20km road race in Stuttgart on June 28 and are hoping that this will give them a final competitive tune-up for the Games event. “It will be a top international field, and a fast course. It will be a good race to get into,” said Scatter, who considers they will have plenty of time to recover before the Games event on July 31. Seatter’s training has been going well. “I am training better than at any time last summer.” He

did have, however, a problem recovering from the demands of walking two Games qualifying events over 30km. “I really knocked myself around, competing on a background of a virus infection. I had an iron storage problem afterwards, and was badly dehydrated, but the last four weeks have been very good.” He is making no predictions on his chances of a medal in the Games walk. The standard was expected to be extremely high, up to the best world standards, and the winning time could be as fast as 2hr 6min. Scatter has a best of 2hr 16min and is confident that he can reduce this “by quite a

margin.” He sees the world’s topranked walker, Dave Smith (Australia), as the man to beat. Smith has a best time of 2hr 6min. Two Canadians, Jean Le Blanc and Francois La Point, and an Englishman, lan McCombie, are all capable of walking the distance in less than 2hr lOmin. McCombie recently recorded 2hr 7min on the games course. “When I competed in the Edmonton Games walk, the winning time was 2hr 22min, which shows how much the standards have lifted,” Scatter said. But he is not intimidated by the times recorded by his rivals. “It is a long race and so much can happen.”