New Zealand Are Off To The Athletics World Champs – Assessing The Team
The Athletics World Championships are taking place in London from August 4-13. It ain’t the Olympics… but it’s the next best thing, don’t doubt it. The Commonwealth Games may be a little more special to kiwis but the World Champs feature a global pool of athletes out there looking for glory – not in the least being Usain Bolt who long ago announced that this tournament would be his last before retirement.
Back in mid-April, Athletics New Zealand confirmed the first six athletes to qualify for the World Champs. The obvious ones, frankly. Tom Walsh and Jacko Gill would be putting shot, Eliza McCartney vaulting over a pole, Zane Robertson running mass distances. There was confusion at the time over the absence of Valerie Adams – we soon found out why when she announced her pregnancy – but Quentin Rew would be there in the race walking after representing NZ at Rio 2016 and rounding out the half dozen was sprinter Joseph Millar.
24 year old Millar has had a pretty rapid rise lately after impressing at the Nitro Athletic games before breaking NZ records in both the 100m and 200m at the national champs. His 20.37 time in the two hundy is only just out of the top-50 times in 2017 and it was enough to book him his entry into the World Champs. Just imagine if he gets Usain Bolt in his heat…
With the Champs only a week out now, the full squad has been revealed. Meaning you can chuck in a little Nick Willis, Julia Ratcliffe, Angie Petty, Camille Buscomb, Marshall Hall and Ben Langton Burnell to the list, taking things up to an even dozen kiwi athletes ready to represent the ol’ silver fern and black singlet in London. That’s two shy of the team that went to Beijing in 2015 but that’s sorta to be expected in the first year of a new Olympic cycle. Aotearoa sent nine athletes to Moscow 2013, eight to Daegu 2011 and 11 to Berlin 2009.
What’s exciting about this 2017 team is that there may be a couple fewer folks than last time but there are also a couple more medal hopes. Two years ago the closest anyone got was a fourth place finish in the shot put final for Tom Walsh (setting a national record which he’s since shattered a couple times) and a sixth place finish in the 1500m final for Nick Willis. Six of the 14 athletes didn’t make it past their first heats. This was while Valerie Adams was injured, by the way, and the four golds and a silver that she’s claimed over the years make up five of the six total medals for New Zealand at these things. Yeah, it ain’t easy. That’s for sure.
The other medal? A gold for Beatrice Faumuina in the 1997 discus event. Queen Bea also had a fifth (1999) and a fourth (2005) over the years. For a competition that’s been around since 1983… well that probably shows you what New Zealand’s been up to in athletics over the years.
But, like, did you think we were Jamaica? Or Kenya? The best young athletes in New Zealand are being pushed into team sports and in a country with less than five million people there aren’t many more to go around. Joseph Millar’s 100m record that he broke earlier this year had stood for 19 years since Chris Donaldson had set it. What does Chris Donaldson do now? He’s the fitness coach for the national cricket team. No worries, this is why NZ is bloody decent at a lot of these other sports. However it does also kinda show that there isn’t a perpetuating athletic history in this country at anything other than middle-distance running.
Except perhaps there might be now. A look at this current squad and you can see that even without Valerie Adams there are still another five throwers in there. Jacko Gill and Tom Walsh with the shot put, obviously. Then Julia Ratcliffe with the hammer, Ben Langton Burnell with the javelin and Marshall Hall is there as a discus thrower.
Ratcliffe and Hall were the last two members confirmed. Both missed qualifying marks initially but were added to the fields in order to bring them up to a full 32 competitors. Southland’s Hall has never represented New Zealand at a major meet before but he is the eight time national champ with the discus and this is a pretty big validation for the 28 year old as he tries to qualify for next year’s Commonwealth Games.
As for Ratcliffe, she woulda been a little more disappointed at not qualifying automatically but then it was always a long shot (well, a long hammer…). The B standard set by Athletics NZ is 25cm beyond her personal & national best but she did manage to lob one deep enough in competition over in America lately that’s got her in. Ratcliffe has just graduated from Princeton University and is best known to kiwis after winning silver at the last Commonwealth Games. Missed out on the Olympics though – you can probably guess that the strength in that sport doesn’t come from the colonial nations (try America and Central/Eastern Europe instead).
So don’t go expecting medals from this pair, based on the way they qualified as much as anything. But for Ratcliffe there’s definitely some room to out-throw those expectations. Her 2017 best of 70.35m is the 31st best distance this calendar year. Her personal best of 70.75m would rise up all the way to… 30th. Yet having had a few issues with a neck injury in the past she’s now back towards a place where breaking that personal best will definitely be a target. And if that happens then a gold at the Comm Games ain’t out of the question either. Of the 30 hammer throwers with longer distances this year, only two (Sophie Hitchens of the UK and Canadian Jillian Weir) are from Commonwealth nations. Get in there.
And if we’re looking at the next generation rising up here then we have to focus on Ben Langton Burnell after the 24 year old accountant got himself into the World Champs having upped his personal best by almost five metres over the last two seasons. A PB of 82.44m got him invited along to the champs even if it didn’t quite meet the qualifying mark and it means that New Zealand will be represented in the men’s javelin for the sixth straight Worlds – despite the retirement of jav-hurling kiwi icon Stuart Farquhar after the last Olympics. Farquhar, the 12-time NZ champ, has mentored BLB for several years now and the apprentice certainly has the master’s records in sights.
As for doing some damage in London, he might be another best suited to the Comm Games for his big break-out. The German buggers of Johannes Vetter and Thomas Rohler regularly throw close to and in excess of 90 metres and that’s well beyond BLB’s current capabilities.
Nah, the best hope for New Zealand medals here comes from Tom Walsh, without a doubt. That lad’s been second only to Olympic champ Ryan Crouser all year – although fellow Yank Joe Kovacs (Olympic silver medallist) has two throws that can top Tommy’s best in 2017. Kovacs won the last World Champs, in which Walsh finished fourth. That trio are the three who can hit that 22.00m mark and that’s a bit of a line in the sand at the moment between the best and the rest. Jacko Gill is slowly beginning to establish himself but he only in January threw 21m for the first time. Look for him to make the final, hopefully, although it’s Walshy who is targeting the podium.
As will be Eliza McCartney. An Olympic bronze medal, as Walshy will attest to, kinda ramps up expectations in that way. Thing is, while Walsh has been in pretty solid form ever since Rio, McCartney has had her troubles with injury. Specifically the Achilles thing that caused her to drop out of a couple Diamond League meets. She’s not 100% yet but a couple weeks out she cleared 4.61m in a Belgian competition on her return and is hopeful ahead of the WCs. You never quite know with pole vault and having missed a month of crucial preparation is never ideal but the PB she set back in February of 4.82 stands as the fourth best mark of 2017 and that’s some seriously competitive stuff.
Quentin Rew is Quentin Rew. Walks really fast and has represented New Zealand at multiple Olympics and World Champs. Very unlikely to get anywhere near the top few spots, just being honest. There are a couple runners that could shock some people though.
Nick Willis is one and we all know what he brings to the track. Top quality tactics and preparation and with some luck his bounding finishing could sneak him onto the podium. Willis may be getting on for a middle-distance runner (most guys his age have switched to longer distances or retired) but he said months ago that he wanted to do something at these Champs. He has two Olympic medals, three Comm Games medals… but he’s never medalled at the World Champs and he seems to view that as a bit of a hole in the ol’ Wikipedia page. Willis is always a good shot at making the final and if the pace stays slow enough there then he can pounce. He ran a 3:34.74 in Monaco last week which is only half a second worse than his best time of 2016 and, being his last chance to qualify, a pretty clutch run too.
Similarly Zane Robertson has to be an outside possibility if the race goes his way. His twin Jake is injured so won’t be competing but Zane is taking part in the 10,000m. He’s a tough one to predict however. At the Olympics last year he ran a 27:33.67 to take 13 seconds off the New Zealand record but only finished 12th. A brilliant run but in a race full of brilliant runners - that same time would be in that same place for the best runs of 2017.
Since then he’s completed a ripper of a 10km road race in Berlin but has mostly been focussing on marathons and half marathons (he’s the NZ record holder in the latter). So… 10km is a sprint for this bloke. It’ll be bloody curious to see how well he peaks here.
Could Angie Petty do much in the 800m? Probably not. She’d have to beat Caster Semenya and a few others – she’s the 38th quickest in 2017 and that’s within a second of her PB. Making the semis would be a success. Getting to the final would be a massive achievement.
Camille Buscomb has really launched herself into the top tier of kiwi track athletes lately, the tier that regularly qualify for these kinds of events. Last year she missed out on the Rio 5000m by four seconds. This year she qualified for London at the 5000m and the 10000m. Her emergence has coincided with focussing on longer distances and at a race in Stanford earlier this year she took 41 seconds off her 10k best and finished within the World Champs qualifying mark by half a flippin’ minute.
Again, don’t really expect much here. Buscomb is an athlete on the rise so she’s nowhere near the pace of Genzebe Dibaba or Hellen Obiri. Her 5000m best is well off being medal relevant although her 10000m best at least cracks the top 25 for this year. When you’ve made such big leaps forward in such a short amount of time though, it’s hard to say what the ceiling is.
And then we have Mr Millar. He had hoped to run the 100m as well as the 200m but his numbers were slightly off and he didn’t qualify. Just having a kiwi sprinter represented though, that’s immense. A knee injury has slowed him down slightly in preparation but he’s in good shape after a breakthrough six months. Chances are he won’t get out of his heat although, you know, best not chuck limitations on these things.
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