Medal count continues to grow for Mid West athletes this season after national track and field championships

Local athletes continue to excel on the track and this time at the national level at the National All Schools Track and Field Championships in Adelaide. Distance athlete Christi Bestry got the Mid West Academy of Sport trio off to a great start in her pet event, the 2000m steeple, holding on in a tough race to take out the bronze medal, her first podium finish at a national level. Her coach Gary Clark said it was a gutsy run by Bestry after drawing the outside lane in the big field of 17 runners taking an incredible 17 seconds off her personal best, with a time of 7min. 11sec. for the 2km journey. “The instruction was to position herself early and to sit in with the first 3-4 runners,” he said. “She did this perfectly and if it was not for having to use up valuable energy early from the outside lane, she might have been close to a silver medal.” Unfortunately, she had limited time to recover and prepare for her next event the 3000m which was conducted early Saturday giving her just a 15-hour break. Clark indicated Bestry said her legs “felt like lead” after the tough steeple the afternoon before and although disappointed she finished in fourth place which was a credible performance. Nevaeh Hill almost pulled off the run of the meet and gold in the tough 400m hurdles, leading most of the way to be pipped on the line to finish in third place. It was close between the first three girls (0.3 sec.) with the winner NSW athlete Ellen Murphy clocking 1min. 2sec., Victorian Elli Symons with 1min. 2.13sec., and Hill 1min. 2.31sec. Clark said she could not have done any more executing their plan to run hard to the first two hurdles, coast the back straight, work the final bend and then finish hard up the final straight. “It worked right up until the last barrier he said with the first three athletes going to the line locked together,” he said. Olympian Lyn Foreman, one of Australia’s greatest exponents of the 400m hurdles, was at the meet in Adelaide and said Hill ran particularly well and had a great future in the long hurdles. Clark said with a further three-plus months to prepare for the Australian Track and Field Championships in Brisbane in early April and her continued improvement he expected her to press for gold. Unfortunately, she, too, had to front up to the short 100m hurdles the next morning which is not her preferred event, registering the seventh fastest time out of the 11 competitors but still only 0.4 outside the medal round. Heptathlete Ella Batten also represented WA in high jump and 100m hurdles after finishing second in both events at the recent State All-Schools Championships. Whilst both events are not here specialty it was an opportunity to compete against the best in Australia as a lead-up to the National Heptathlon early next year. Batten performed well in the very competitive high jump on Saturday afternoon, clearing 1.60 and just missing a personal best of 1.64, placing her sixth in a field of 10 and only 0.11 off the bronze medal. She, too, had to front up to the 100m hurdles first thing on Sunday missing the final with a 15.80 run.