Twenty records fall at school champs
IT was a day for breaking records at the Caledonian Ground on Saturday.
Twenty meeting records fell at the Otago secondary schools championships.
Taieri College throwers Zharna Beattie and Hamish Mears broke two records each, as did Otago Boys’ High School jumper Jackson Toms.
Runners Josh Hou, of John McGlashan College, Zoe Smith, of Mt Aspiring College, and Nathan Hill, of Otago Boys’, all broke two records as well.
Beattie threw 36.52m in the girls’ under15 discus to break the old mark by over 4m.
Her throw of 11.99m also broke the shot put record of 11.76m.
Mears threw 47.59m to beat the old mark in the boys’ under16 discus by more than 2m. He also comprehensively broke the shot put record of 13.29 with a throw of 13.75m.
Toms jumped 5.94m to break Peter Cox’s record of 5.88m in the boys’ under15 long jump, set in 1998. And he leapt 12.43 in the triple jump, smashing the old record of 11.88m.
Hou broke records in both the boys’ under14 1500m and 3000m.
He ran 4min 29.19sec to break Josh Browne’s 1500m record by 2sec, before smashing his 3000m record by 10sec with a time of 9min 42.30sec.
He nearly made it a hattrick too, missing Chris McNoe’s 800m record by less than a second.
Hill ran an impressive 8min 43.71sec to demolish the senior boys’ 3000m record of 8min 57.33sec, while also breaking the 1500m record in 4min 4.07sec.
In the girls’ under14 races, Smith ran 2min 23.78sec to break the 800m record by 4sec and managed 4min 47.97sec to break the 1500m record by nearly 10sec.
Fellow Mt Aspiring runner Sammy Burke ran 10min 13.36sec to break her own senior girls’ 3000m record, while also winning the 1500m.
Jack East added another record for the school with a run of 58.73sec in the under15 boys’ 400m.
Others to break records were Alex Brown, Drew Cairney, Tara McNally, Cameron
Moffitt, Dominic Morrison, Ethan Walker and Hannah Ashton.