Fourth successive cup win for Chignell
OLI Chignell continued his winning run by claiming his fourth consecutive Edmond Cup crosscountry title at Wingatui on Saturday.
The 20yearold was the fastest of 55 runners to speed across the testing conditions.
Chignell notched 16min 4.3sec for the 5km course to win by 55.8sec.
The staminatesting hitout will be Chignell’s last before competing in what he expects to be even tougher conditions in Wellington at the national crosscountry championships.
‘‘From what I have heard, Wellington is the closest to an actual crosscountry course in quite a few years. It has got a couple of decent hills, it’s got steeplechases and it is just covered in mud.’’
‘‘It is quite hard to gain rhythm when you have all those horseshoe holes [at Wingatui], but other than that, it is probably not too dissimilar a course. It’s very muddy, relatively technical and quite challenging.’’
Chignell gave his tactics for next month’s national championships a test run in Saturday’s race and they worked to perfection.
‘‘The plan was to replicate what the national crosscountry is going to be like in five weeks,’’ he said.
‘‘The plan was for the first kilometre to a mile just to be with the pack and relatively relaxed and then just try to really break away fast and keep that speed the entire way.’’
Chignell won the under20 race at last year’s nationals and will return to compete in the open men’s competition this year.
The Edmond Cup men’s event was a trifecta finish for Hill City University club, as Samuel Bremer finished second and Drew Cairney took third.
Rebekah Greene continued her brilliant comeback to middledistance running by winning the women’s event.
Greene crossed the line in 18min 31.8sec, 2min 48.4sec ahead of Caversham runner, Kristy Eyles.
Her clubmate Donna Young took third place.
Younger runners claimed
2.5km events.
Becky De La Harpe scored a 16.1sec win over Zara Geddes in the open women’s event and also won the under15 category.
Jake Owen secured the open and under15 men’s titles.