Ratcliffe stuns at Porritt Classic
Dame Valerie Adams produced a season-best effort, and Tom Walsh and Nick Willis made strong strides towards Tokyo, but an Olympic hopeful hammer thrower from Waikato stole the headlines at the Porritt Classic athletics meet in Hamilton on Saturday.
2018 Commonwealth Games champion Julia Ratcliffe produced a stunning series of throws in her home town event, twice beating her own New Zealand record to come within touching distance — centimetres, in fact — of qualifying for this year’s Tokyo Olympics.
After opening with a huge throw of 71.69m, smashing her own 71.39m national record, Ratcliffe capped off her sensational day — which saw five of her six attempts sail past the 70m mark — with 72.35m to improve her personal best and come within 15cm of automatic Olympic qualification.
The 26 year old, who also claimed New Zealand all-comers and Oceania records, said it was “really special” to produce her record-breaking performance in front of her home crowd, but she also saw the event as merely a stepping stone in her journey towards the Olympics.
“Honestly it hasn’t really sunk in yet, it really hasn’t,” Ratcliffe told Radio Sport. “Everyone is kind of coming up and congratulating me but at the moment I feel so confident in my plan and my team around me that it feels just like part of the plan. We’re just ticking boxes at this stage.
“I’m sure it will hit me a bit later but it’s really satisfying, I guess. And it’s really cool to have a lot of my team out here, like my nutritionist, my physio, my strength and conditioning coach, and of course my dad Dave, who coaches me in the throwing.
“So it was really special to have so many people out here and to do it at the home ground where I learned to throw when I was a young one.”
Ratcliffe also claimed valuable ranking points in her quest to represent New Zealand at the Olympics, which offers her another road towards qualification outside the 72.50m standard, and she said she’s feeling confident of reaching both goals.
“I’m really confident at this stage, both that I’m going to hit the 72.50m and that I’ll be in the position in the rankings to be selected for the New Zealand team,” she said.
“So hopefully get in both ways but I’m really confident with the points systems as well.
“My next meeting is the Capital Classic down in Wellington in two weeks.
“So again that’s kind of my second home after working down there at the Reserve Bank for a year-and-a-half.
“Hopefully, we’ll get some of the work crowd out, they’re really excited; hopefully another semihome crowd out there.”
Adams continued her comeback to the top of women’s shot put with a winning put of 18.81m, improving on the 18.65m Olympic qualifying effort she set at the Potts Classic last month.
The 35-year-old double Olympic gold medallist looked to be getting back to the top of her game after the birth of her second child, and will be looking to break the 19m mark at the Sir Graeme Douglas international meet in Auckland on Sunday.
Former world champion Tom Walsh also took a step towards reaching top form with a winning distance of 21.35m in the men’s shot put, while two-time Olympic medallist Nick Willis stormed home in the men’s 1500m with a time of 3m 46.71s as he also hopes to qualify for Tokyo.