Kiwi Olympian invited to race in club’s push for quick 800mtime
Some exciting news for local athletes is the possibility of Nick Willis competing at our club night on February 19. A group of Wellington athletes are keen to organise a paced 800m aimed at assisting national 800m titleholder Brad Mathas to a sub 1min 50sec time, and the local club has agreed to include this additional race in their club night.
The event is still in the planning stage but already one of our leading sprinters has expressed an interested in assisting with the pacemaking role. Willis has not as yet confirmed his availability but it is certainly a possibility.
Readers may recall that it was Mathas who did the pacemaking for Willis when he ran his sub 4-minute mile at Whanganui recently.
I notice in one of Peter Lampp’s articles he expressed his dislike for the use of a pacemaker who does not complete the race and felt only times in championship type events should be recognised. I disagree. The athlete still has to have the stamina and ability to finish the race and the time recorded is the time they ran the distance in.
The pacemaker is very common in a lot of high-profile middledistance track events but is not a lot different from what happens in other sports. In cycling, I think one of their Olympic events is paced by a motorcycle for most of the race and in the team pursuit, one of the riders is seen to drop out a lap or two short of the finish after a final
hard pacemaking lap. The Vautier Pharmacy Manawatu Striders Super Seven Series is into its fourth week today.
They have once again had fantastic turnouts with numbers steadily increasing on each of the three nights. The weather gods were not kind on the first night but still 1303 registered.
The brilliant weather over the next two weeks no doubt contributed to the numbers increasing to 1657 on the second night, then 1763 last week.
The increasing number of children participating is great. Along with the family groups, they are finding the new additional option of a 3km event very popular.
The organisers are requesting that in the interests of safety, participants with prams or buggies start from under the start-finish banner and keep clear of others while taking part. There has been much made of the pace of the United States Rugby sevens player Carlin Isles.
His credentials are unquestionable as he was ranked the 36th-fastest sprinter in the US with a 10.13sec time – far faster than anyone has run in New Zealand.
What has raised a few eyebrows in New Zealand athletics circles are the times credited to New Zealand rugby player, Joe Rokocoko, who was reported to have run 10.66sec while at school.
It would be interesting to know the background to this time which I believe is a school record. In athletics, although digital stopwatches now record times to one hundredth of a second, manual times are rounded up to the next tenth of a second.
Only electronic timing is recorded to one hundredth of a second. It is accepted that there is a 0.24sec difference between an electronic time and that of an experienced timekeeper, the difference being the reaction time in starting and stopping the stopwatch.
I guess what I am saying is that if Rokocoko’s 10.66sec was hand timed, it would equate to, at best, a 10.9sec electronic time, or even slower with inexperienced timekeepers. We do not know if the race was wind assisted and how accurate were the track measurements.
We will never know these answers but I have been unable to find any national athletic results with Rokocoko featuring.
Interestingly, one of the leading schoolboy sprinters at the time Rokocoko was at school was Palmerston North Boys’ High School’s Hayden Townsend. I would like to throw in two names as to who was the fastest All Black. Both players from the 1960s , Rod Heeps or Tony Steel. They played in the days where you could do both sports and athletics was contested over imperial distances. Heeps had a best time of 9.6sec, which equates to a 10.4sec for the 100m whereas Steel won several national titles with a best 9.7sec for a 10.5sec conversion .
What’s on. –
February 5 Palmerston North club night Programme B February 5 Manawatu Striders Super 7 YMCA February 9 Porritt Classic Hamilton February 12 Palmerston North Programme C February 12 Manawatu Striders Super 7 February 13 Te Kawau recommence February 17 Ashhurst Ribbon Day February 19 Palmerston North club night Programme C.