Gold for Canty’s Petty
New Zealand’s Angie Petty ran a personal best to win gold in the 800m final at the World University Games in Korea.
The 23-year-old Cantabrian ran a brilliantly paced race in Gwangju at the weekend, overhauling early leader, Jamaica’s Simoya Kadine, just 5m from the finish line to take the title and become New Zealand’s first gold medallist at the games.
Petty went under the 2-minute barrier for the first time. Her 1:59.06 was almost a second under her previous best and sees her closing in on the New Zealand record of 1:58.25 set by Toni Hodgkinson at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.
Coached by Athletics NZ High Performance Coach Maria Hassan, Petty placed fourth in the 800m at the previous World University Games in Kazan, Russia in 2013 and then finished fifth over the same distance at the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games.
Her latest performance ranks Petty seventh in the world for 2015 and is a confidence booster heading into the World Championships in Beijing in August.
In other finals, Rosa Flanagan and Cameron French both finished in fifth places. Flanagan, 19, from Canterbury, ran the 3000m steeplechase in 9:55.05.
French, a 23-year-old Hamilton athlete ran the 400m hurdles in 49.92.
Meanwhile New Zealand athletes doubled their medal haul to four on Saturday. Camille Buscomb ran an excellent 5000m race to grab the silver medal, with a very fast last lap to record a time of 16:03.72, just 0.43s behind the winner, Kristina Maki from the Czech Republic. Minutes earlier, Buscomb's Hamilton club mate, Julia Ratcliffe, grabbed the bronze for her third placing in the hammer throwing 67.54m.