Athletics Australia
In Melbourne at the Victorian Championships over the weekend, Cathy Freeman clocked an Olympic A qualifying time of 23.19 seconds into a 1.4m/s headwind over 200m to beat World Championships finalist Lauren Hewitt by 0.05 seconds.
Other Olympic A qualifying performances recorded at the Vic Championships were by Tamsyn Lewis (400m - 52.16) and Anne Cross (5000m - 15:20.78). In the men's 5000m Darren Lynch just missed the 'A' standard but ran a personal best of 13:30.96 to pip Mike Power (13:33.56) and Shaun Creighton (13:38.19).
Glorious and unexpected track and field conditions in Perth had paved the way for another 10 Olympic 'A' qualifying performances at the BankWest Grand Prix, part of the Optus Grand Prix Series, on Saturday.
These were achieved by Patrick Johnson and Matt Shirvington (100m), Patrick Dwyer (400m), Kyle Vander Kuyp (110m hurdles), Shane Hair (long jump), Dmitri Markov (pole vault), Adrian Hatcher and Andrew Currey (javelin throw), Nova Peris-Kneebone (400m) and Emma George (pole vault).
The total number of Australian athletes who have achieved the Olympic A qualifying standard now stands at 70.
