Petty goes oh so close
So close, yet so far. Angie Petty has missed a place in the athletics world championships 800 metres semifinals by an agonising threehundreths of a second.
The 25-year-old Canterbury athlete finished fourth in the third heat, pipping Jamaica’s Natoya Goule on the line by 0.01s to come home in 2min 01.76sec. That was one spot out of the automatic qualifying positions and left her sweating on squeezing through as one of the six fastest losers.
But it was not to be as Petty frustratingly missed a semifinal spot by just one position, and 0.03s, shaded by South Africa’s Gena Lofstrand (2:01.73) for the last of the fastest loser positions.
Petty’s heat was won by controversial South African athlete Caster Semenya who cruised home in 2:01.33. The New Zealander’s time was well off her season’s best of 2:00.44s as she just couldn’t match the finishing kick of the top trio.
Petty then had to sweat out the remaining three heats to see if her time would hold up, and was looking good until the final race emerged as the fastest of the six, with seven of the eight starters making it through to the semifinals.
‘‘I should have been running way better than that 2:01,’’ said the six time national champ and World University Games gold medallist. ‘‘But it was the way it was run. I didn’t position myself well.
‘‘I didn’t seem to have it in that last 100m. It just felt a weird race but I still gave it everything, but just didn’t feel as sharp as I was hoping.’’
Hamilton-based Palmerston North athlete Ben Langtonburnell, competing at his first world championships, was well off the pace in qualifying for the men’s javelin.
The 24-year-old managed a best throw of 76.46 metres in the second group, which left him well short of the 83m required to progress to the final. He had a best of 82.44m achieved in Hamilton in June to qualify for the championships.
The Kiwi opened with that 76.46m throw, then followed it with 73.47m and, finally, 74.46m to finish
12th in the group and 24th overall.
‘‘I absolutely loved it – fantastic crowd, fantastic venue, it was a lot of fun and I can’t wait for future championships,’’ he said afterwards.
’’I didn’t quite connect the 76m throw how I was wanting to, but it was good to experience that in my first championships.
‘‘The technical model didn’t quite hold and I have things to work on. My left leg wasn’t holding so I was collapsing my block and it was hard to put power into the javelin.’’
Langton Burnell will head to the World University Games in two weeks and will then set himself for next year’s Commonwealth Games.
German Johannes Venter led the 13 javelin qualifiers with a mammoth 91.20m, with five athletes throwing better than 85m.
Meanwhile, Waikato’s Camille Buscomb didn’t fire a shot in the first heat of the 5000m, taking the lead at the end of the first kilometre but was spat out the back of the field when the pace really went on.
Buscomb finished 16th, and last, in the heat won by Kenya’s Hellen Obiri, with a disappointing time of 15min 40.41s.
Obiri was the first of seven athletes in the heat to come home under the 15-minute mark with a winning time of 14:56.70.
Buscomb’s time placed her 30th of the 32 athletes over the two heats and completed a disappointing championships after she also tailed out in the 10,000m.
‘‘I wasn’t intending on leading but I wanted to be in a position near the front because I knew that was my only chance to feel part of it,’’ she said.
‘‘I thought I could have hung on as long as possible, and I did hang on. But I didn’t have it.’’
Though the effort in qualifying for her first world championships had left her short of her best in London, the 27-year-old felt the experience would stand her in good stead.
‘‘I’ll learn a lot from this,’’ she said. ‘‘It was pretty daunting in the 10k and I felt a little more in control today. I didn’t run super-fast, as the last part of the race I was on my own.’’