Report06 Jun 2013


Doubles for Tabakaucoro and Wisil; Gerrard wins Decathlon: Oceania Area Champs day three report

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Toea Wisil (PNG) (© Getty Images)

Toea Wisil and Ratu Banuve Tabakaucoro completed sprint doubles when they won their respective 100m as the Oceania Area Championships, which concluded in Papeete, French Polynesia, on Wednesday.

Papua New Guinea’s Wisil was unpressured as she won the women’s 100 by almost five metres in 11.90 into a headwind of 0.7 metre- per-second, adding to the 200m title the Australian-based sprinter won on Monday.

Tabakaucoro, representing Fiji, comfortably won his race in 10.74 (-1.0 mps) from Tonga’s Siveni Filimone, who was second in 10.99.

New Zealand’s Nick Gerrard, the overnight leader, maintained his dominance of the Decathlon through the second day to take the title in the Oceania leg of the IAAF Combined Events Challenge.

After day one, Gerrard had been not too far off the pace of his personal best of 7256 points set at this year’s Australian Championships in Sydney. However, Gerrard lost a little momentum and he finished the second day with a score of 6864 points.

Gerrard ran 15.42 for the 110m Hurdles, threw 39.98m in the Discus, cleared a modest 3.80 in the Pole Vault, tossed the Javelin 50.75m before finishing the gruelling 10 events with a 5:17.15 for the 1500m.

Following wins in the Discus and Shot Put, the latter in a personal best of 17.22m, Samoa’s Alex Rose continued his one-title-a-day progress through the Championships, this time taking the Hammer throw with a best distance of 55.49m.

Australia’s Cedric Dubler and New Zealand’s Jordan Peters both cleared 2.06m in the High Jump, earning Dubler a third gold medal to go with his earlier wins in the Pole Vault and Long Jump.

In the women’s Discus, Australia’s Christie Chamberlain threw 50.68m to narrowly beat Cook Islands’ Tereapii Tapoki, who was second with 49.98m.

Papua New Guinea added two more senior titles to go with Wisil’s 100m victory, with Mowen Boino winning the men’s 400m Hurdles in 51.97 and the veteran distance runner Sapolai Yao winning the 3000 metres steeplechase.

Boino,33, has represented PNG regularly at Olympic Games. IAAF World Championships and Commonwealth Games since making his debut at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games while 31-year-old Yao competed in all the distance events at the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games.

The championships program concludes with a closing ceremony on Thursday, 6 June, at which all the senior and under 18 male and female performers of the championships will be honoured.

The next edition of the Oceania Area Championships will be staged in Raratonga, Cook Islands, in June 2014.

Len Johnson for the IAAF

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