ELECTRIC ELLIE IN AUSTRALIAN TEAM
YOUNG athlete Ellie Beer’s star continues to rise.
Ellie, who featured in this column recently, has been named in the Australian team to compete at the IAAF World Relay Championships in Japan next month.
She is one of five Gold Coasters in the squad.
Ellie, 16, was the Gold Coast Academy of Sport’s female athlete of the year in 2017 and has a great future.
She has been in outstanding form this year, running 52.53 seconds for the 400m last month at the Queensland Track Classic where she beat some of Australia’s top open female athletes.
She backed that up by wintion
ning the 200m-400m double in the under-17 division at the Australian track and field championships in Sydney this month.
The other Gold Coasters in the Australian squad are Sally Pearson, Alex Beck, Murray Goodwin and Riley Day.
Sally will confirm her selecas it gets closer because she withdrew from competition at the recent national championships.
The relay championships is an international biennial track and field sporting event where teams from around the world compete in relay races.
Some of the relays are not part of the Olympic program.
The first three championships took place in Nassau, Bahamas, in 2014, 2015 and 2017.
This competition was originally intended to be an annual event but was later decided to happen every odd year to coincide with the world titles. To this point, they will act as a qualification for the Olympics.
This year, the competition format will include 4x100m relay, the 4x200m relay and the 4x400m relay with two new events established to be introduced this year.
These will be mixed events, 2x2x400m relay and shuttle hurdles relay.
The mixed 2x2x400m event will be an endurance relay requiring both members of the team to run two 400m legs which will lean towards 800m runners being selected.
The relay championships will be held in Yokohama on May 11-12, in the Nissan Stadium, also known as International Stadium Yokohama.
The 72,000-seat arena hosted the 2002 FIFA World Cup final.