Oceania Championships

​Day two: Wisil wins gold

The highlight for PNG was in the last race of the night that Toea Wisil, as expected, blitzed the field in the women’s 100m to win by a margin of 0.6 of a second.

In the men’s race, Nazmie Lee Marai almost caused a major upset as he closed in fast on the hot favourite Jeremy Dodson of Samoa (formerly of the USA) with the finish line approaching.

His run however, was timed a fraction late as he missed out on a world championships qualifying win by 2/100th of a second.

PNG snatch two gold, silver on day one

Rellie Kaputin won the long jump with her fifth jump of the competition, leapfrogging Australian Jessie Harper who had led from the first round.

There were no records this time for Kaputin but she did have the satisfaction of being the only athlete to record six legal jumps, taking off behind the board every time.

Simbai Kaspar was the surprise winner of the men’s 5000m in a time of 15mins 50 seconds, which is just a shade outside his personal best of 15min 49sec set in 2015.

Fellow Simbu athlete Abel Siune won silver in the U20 men’s 5000m.

Athletics PNG names squad for Oceania Championships

The team of 24 male and 12 athletes is a very strong all-round team which will cover all disciplines of hurdles, long distance, jumps and throws in the open division as well as the traditionally strong PNG sprint and middle distance squad.

In addition to the open athletes, the team includes four junior girls and five junior boys.

Athletes showing good progress

David Guka who attended the Athletics PNG training camp in Goroka in January has shown a big improvement since moving up to the longer sprints, recording 50.7 seconds clocked in the 400m after running an 800m race earlier.

New Irelander Morgan Tobeno has also shown significant improvement this year.

Nineteen-year-old Roland Hure has been impressive in the long jump in the two competitions held so far.

Nelson Stone is also preparing for the Oceania Championships and has started running 100m and 200m races to gauge his progress.

PNG wins one silver and two bronze

The trio of Geoffrey Loi, Nao Agari and Albert Arua Kora picked up bronze in the U18 Junior team competition.

In the Para Events, Vero Nime took out bronze in the Women’s Standing Class. The women’s team (PNG and Solomon Islands) then won silver.

Coach, Rea Loi said the team did very well both in both the Para and Junior Events at an Oceania Championship.

“We are thankful to PNGOC and the sponsors -  Chinese Embassy, China PNG Friendship Association and Leon enterprise for funding the trip,” said Loi.