News23 Mar 2010


Australia selects 38 for Moncton World Junior Championships

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Amy Pejkovic of Australia celebrates her bronze medal in the High Jump (© Getty Images)

A team of 38 rising stars of international track and field has been selected to represent Australia at the 13th IAAF world junior championships in Moncton, Canada, in July.

The selection of the World junior team follows the running of the inaugural Australian Junior Athletics Championships in Sydney this month, which doubled as the selection trials for the IAAF titles.

The team will be headed up by seven members of last year’s World Youth Championships team, including high jump silver medallist Amy Pejkovic. She will be joined in Moncton by world youth teammates Mitchell Tysoe (110m hurdles), Dane Bird-Smith (10,000m walk), Alex Beck (4x400m relay), Paige Hooper (10,000m walk), Brooke Stratton (long jump) and Taryn Gollshewsky (discus throw).

At just 19 years of age Victoria’s Kim Mulhall will line up for her third national team, following appearances at the 2007 world youth championships in Ostrava (CZE) and the 2008 world junior championships in Bydgoszcz (POL).

Commonwealth Youth Games gold medallists Sam Baines (110m hurdles) and Julian Wruck (discus throw) and fellow Commonwealth Youth representatives Todd Wakefield (1500m), Matt Cowie (shot put) and Amanda Bartrim (pole vault) will also make their return to the world stage.

Adding further weight to the team’s international resume, all four walkers selected to the squad – Bird-Smith, Hooper, Rhydian Cowley and Regan Lamble – will represent Australia at the IAAF World Race Walking Cup in Chihuahua, Mexico, in May.

Nine relay-specific runners will make the trip to Moncton, with the Australian team likely to field squads in all four relay events (girls’ and boys’ 4x100m, girls’ and boys’ 4x400m). The selection of relay-only runners to the 2010 edition of the world junior titles is testament to the national selectors’ confidence in all four teams to claim top-eight finishes in Moncton and the athletes to push for senior selection in coming years.

In July the team of 21 boys and 17 girls will take part in a two-day warm-up meet with teams from Canada and New Zealand before travelling to Moncton to take on the best emerging talent from around the world across seven days of hard-fought track and field action.

Open to all athletes born 1991 to 1994, the world junior championships have acted as the launch pad for the careers of current world champions including Usain Bolt (100m/200m, JAM), LaShawn Merritt (400m, USA), Kerron Clement (400m hurdles, USA) and Valerie Vili (shot put, NZL).

Australia has a proud history of success at the world junior championships, with 11 gold medals taken home by our rising stars of the sport in the meet’s 25-year history. Two of the nation’s former world junior title-holders, Jana Pittman-Rawlinson (400m/400m hurdles, 2000) and Dani Samuels (discus throw, 2006), have gone on to become world champions, Pittman Rawlinson claiming the 400m hurdles crown in 2003 and 2007 and Samuels taking out the discus throw in 2009.

Australian Team

Boys (21)

100m: Patrick Fakiye (NSW)
200m: Jake Hammond (NSW), Mathew Turk (Vic)
800m: Kuey Diew (Qld), Adrian Plummer (Qld)
1500m: Brett Robertson (ACT), Todd Wakefield (NSW)
5000m: Kevin Batt (NSW)
110m hurdles: Sam Baines (Vic), Mitchell Tysoe (NSW)
400m hurdles: Sasha Alexeenko (Qld)
Shot put: Matt Cowie (WA)
Discus throw: Julian Wruck (Qld)
10,000m walk: Dane Bird-Smith (Qld), Rhydian Cowley (Vic)
4x100m relay: Patrick Fakiye (NSW), Tom Gamble (Qld), Jake Hammond (NSW), Mathew Turk (Vic)
4x400m relay: Alex Beck (Qld), Joel Bee (Vic), Grant Billingham (ACT), Kuey Diew (Qld), Johnny Raynor (Vic), Steven Solomon (NSW)

Girls (17)

100m: Caitlin Sargent (Qld)
200m: Karlie Morton (NSW), Ella Nelson (NSW)
400m: Anneliese Rubie (NSW)
100m hurdles: Rosie Lawson (Qld)
High jump: Emily Crutcher (NSW), Amy Pejkovic (NSW)
Pole vault: Amanda Bartrim (NSW)
Long jump: Brooke Stratton (Vic)
Discus throw: Taryn Gollshewsky (Qld), Kim Mulhall (Vic)
Hammer throw: Lara Nielsen (Qld)
10,000m walk: Paige Hooper (SA), Regan Lamble (ACT)
4x100m relay: Rosie Lawson (Qld), Karlie Morton (NSW), Ella Nelson (NSW), Caitlin Sargent (Qld)
4x400m relay: Louise Maybury (Qld), Melissa McKinnon (Qld), Anneliese Rubie (NSW), Caitlin Sargent (Qld), Shannon Smith (Qld)

Athletics Australia for the IAAF

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