Costley wins Mountain Title

Phil Costley wins Mountain title

Phil Costley was in a class of his own as he showed a clean pair of heels to the others in collecting his fourth national mountain running title on Saturday.

The wirily 42 year old from Nelson rocketed up the 14.2km climb to the top of Mt Campbell in Motueka in 1h 10m 31s. Defending champion Dougan Butler of Hawera was unable to match the pace set by Costley and had to run his own race for second in 1h 12m 58s. Glenn Hughes of Wellington, the 2009 champion, was third in 1h 14m 8s. Costley has now chalked up 31 national titles on the track, cross country, road including marathon and half marathon and mountain running. His record, which started with the 3000m steeplechase title in 1994 is; 3000m (1), 5000m (1), 10,000m (1), 3000m steeplechase (5), half marathon (4), marathon (2), cross country 12km (6), cross country 4km (4), road (3), mountain (4).

Hannah Newbould of Canterbury added the women’s title to the 5000m track title won last month. Newbould clocked 48m 37s for the 7.2km climb, over a minute faster than Wellington’s Marjolein Ros and third placed Helen Rountree of Hamilton. Tauranga’s Sally Gibbs (48) easily won her age group title in 49m 51s. The fastest woman on the day was Olympic cross country skier team bronze medallist Antonella Confortola of Italy who recorded 45m 30s in the community 7.2km race.

The junior titles both went to Wellington athletes, Ryan McAlister in the men and Ariana Harper in the women.