USA
Prefontaine Classic Diamond League Eugene Oregon – 1/2 June 2012
Stuart Farquhar
This year’s world leading javelin thrower Stuart Farquhar of Hamilton finished third at the Diamond League meeting in Eugene Oregon.
Farquhar sent the javelin out to 82.23m in the opening round of the competition but was unable to improve over the next five rounds. His only other recorded throw was 79.09m in his second attempt. Farquhar leads the world with 86.31m in Hiroshima in late April.
Latvian Vadims Vasilevskis, silver medallist at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, won with a performance of 84.65m with Vitezslav Vesely of the Czech Republic third recording a throw of 83.78m.
Beijing Olympic Games 1500m silver medallist Nick Willis was seventh in the mile in a time of 3m 51.77s, just over a second outside his personal best of 3m 50.66s set a the same meeting in 2008.
Willis was pleased with his run at this stage of his training leading up to the Olympic Games.
“I was hoping to go under 3m 52s which would be an okay race, under 3m 51s would be good and under 3m 50s would be really really good,” he said.
“I’m already going to the Games, so there is plenty of time for me to focus on my training. This weekend was important for me to break up the monotony of training and to see exactly where we are at and because of that I didn’t want to forward risk in getting tripped up, being on the start line with 19 guys. So I decided just to get in behind and get a better gauge of my fitness,” said Willis.
Olympic and world 1500m champion Asbel Kiprop of Kenya won in 3m 49.40s, from Mekonnen Gebremedhin of Ethiopia 3m 50.17s and Ayanleh Souliman of Djibouti 3m 50.21s.
Last year in Eugene, Willis was tenth in 3m 51.95s and Kiprop was third in 3m 49.55s.
San Diego Rock ’n Roll Half Marathon – 3 June 2012
Olympic Marathon contender Kimberley Smith easily won the half marathon in 68m 37s.
Smith finished seventh overall in the race and was the fastest woman by seven minutes in her fourth fastest time over the distance. She was through the first 5km in 15m 50s, 10km in 31m 54s and 10 miles in 51m 52s. Her New Zealand record is 67m 11s, set in Philadelphia last September. Smith has now won seven of her last eight half marathon’s on US soil and is pleased with her progress towards the London Olympic Marathon on 5 August. Her next race is likely to be a 10km road race in Boston on 24 June.
SWITZERLAND
EAP & Swiss Meeting, Geneva – 2 June 2012
Andrea Miller has got off to a promising start to her European campaign posting 100 metres hurdle times quicker than she ran to win the bronze medal at the Delhi Commonwealth Games in 2010.
The national champion who is chasing an Olympic Games qualifying time of 12.96s, finished fifth in the 100m hurdles in 13.24s (-0.4). In the heats she clocked 13.23s (-0.2). Miller’s next race will be at the Bislett Diamond League meeting in Oslo on Friday morning (NZ time). It will be her first start at a Diamond League event and she will race against training partner and World Champion Sally Pearson from Australia.
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