N.Z. wins world road relay

Press, 19 December 1988, Page 40

N.Z. wins world road relay

PA Wellington!; New Zealand's depth ini; women’s running paidjdividends yesterday with-’ a win in the world road relay championships in Chiba, Japan, said the convener of selectors, Ron Cain. The six-strong women’s team of Marguerite Buist, Jackie Goodman, Anne Hannam, Sonia Barry, Lesley Morton and Lorraine Moller clocked 2hr 15min 49s to win the 42.195 km race ihead of the United States on 2:17.09 and Australia

(2:18.01). The win jneant New Zealand retained the title it won at the inaugural championship in Hiroshima two years ago. Of the 1986 winning team, which clocked 2:18.08 and held off strong attacks from Russia and the United States to wirf, only Moller and the manager, Heather Matthews, returned for this year’s race. Mr Cain said the win was largely due to the depth of women's running in New Zealand, iespeci-

ally as three withdrawals, one barely a day before the squad left, put pressure on team members. The American-based Aucklander, Chrissie Pfitzinger, was the first to withdraw, forced out by a nagging hamstring injury. Then the cross-country captain Mary O’Connor (Canterbury), part of the 1986 winning team, and the Oklahoma-based Christine McMiken also withdrew because" of inZealand’s two other U.S.-based runners,

Goodman and Barry, and Buist replaced the trio, Buist coming in just 15 hours before the team left. “I never like to predict too much, but I really felt that this team was at least as good as the 1986 one,” Mr Cain said from Dunedin. “There’s been a bit of criticism about the team we picked. We did a lot of homework and it was a very difficult decision to make. But the justification is there — that’s a terrific result.”