Toea Wisil

Wisil came agonisingly close to the World Championship Qualifying time of 23.10 as she led the field for 150m before being overhauled by Australia’s Rio Olympic semi finalist, Ella Nelson, who won the race in 23.00.

Top ranked Australian 400m runner Morgan Mitchell was third in 23.44 seconds.

“We said Toea was in great shape,” said a delighted Coach Tony Fairweather after the race. 

Focus now turns to the Australian National Championships in Sydney (March 31 to April 2).

Wisil, the Pacific’s golden girl of the track, will have to eclipse times of 11.26 seconds and 23.10 sec respectively in the 100m and 200m qualifying times.

PNG’s sprint star will face her strongest competition of the season yet with Australian Rio Olympians Melissa Breen, Ella Nelson and Morgan Mitchell, out to test their speed and challenge for honours in the Summer of Athletics Grand Prix Meet.

On her way to completing the sprint double at the ACT Championships, Wisil set a new national record of 23.23 secs in the 200m heats and equaled her personal best of 11.29 seconds in the 100m, edging out Breen who ran 11.33. 

Breen is said to be a little behind where she normally is at this stage of the season, following some hamstring concerns but was very happy with her races at the weekend.

There has been little rest after the Rio Olympics for Wisil as she sets out on her quest to reach new heights this year.

Wisil began on January 7 with a timing of 11.49s for the 100m in Brisbane.

She then travelled to Canberra last weekend hoping to race Australia’s Melissa Breen but that outing ended in disappointment when Breen withdrew from the event for personal reasons.

Some confusion then occurred with officials trying to put Wisil into a mixed race with male runners which was not what Wisil and her coach Tony Fairweather wanted.

Wisil said this when asked about her career today at the Jacksons International Airport on her way to Kokopo for the High Performance course program.

“2020 is going to be my last appearance when I attend the Olympics in Tokyo, this is my plan but any PNG female that is coming up I will be more than happy to be there for them and encourage them to get into the Tokyo 2020 Olympics,” Toea said.

Adding that for the 2019 Pacific Games in Tonga she will be there once again to represent the country on the track.

PNG Loop caught up with Wisil on her way to the domestic terminal to transit to Kokopo. Toea said she was invited by colleagues Betty Burua and Theo Pinau who were currently in Kokopo organising the event under the High Performance course to encourage young athletes  to participate in athletics.

The sprint queen was excited to be back in the country and showed a lot of enthusiasm when speaking about encouraging the young ones through the program when she visits schools in Kokopo as part of the program.

Wisil will hit the track to compete in heat seven of round one in the 100m sprints event against Breen and seven other runners.

Her race is confirmed to take place at 12.22pm PNG time.

Wisil’s coaching staff on ground report that the sprint Queen is a more confident athlete than in 2012 and has worked really hard on being able to finish her races better.

Wisil, who ran an Olympic qualifying time of 11.29 seconds in Fiji last month, is exempted from the preliminary round through to round one.

Wisil, who ran an Olympic qualifying time of 11.29 seconds in Fiji last month, is exempted from the preliminary round which the non-qualified athletes will run earlier in the day.

It is not yet known exactly which athletes will feature in Wisil’s heat as the draw will only be made after the preliminaries, which will see a field of 24 athletes whittled down to 8 to go into the first round draw with Wisil and 64 other qualified athletes.

At the national championships in Lae, Toea Wisil ran a time of 11.36 seconds in the 100 metres race, taking 1/100th of a second off the time set by Mae Koime in Brisbane in March 2007.

In Jacksonville, Florida in the USA, Theo Piniau smashed Nelson Stone’s 200m record and became the first PNG athlete to run under 21 seconds as he won his race in a time of 20.97 seconds.

The performance catapulted Piniau ahead of Mowen Boino in the race for a spot on the team to Rio.

Athletics PNG will select one female and one male athlete for the Games under the universality rule.

Universality rule guarantees every Olympic Committee a place for one male and one female athlete regardless of qualifying standards.

APNG president Tony Green says Wisil is in the drivers seat for selection if no one runs a qualifying time.

“We have drawn up selection guidelines to eliminate any doubts as to what would happen in the event that someone else runs a qualifying time,” said Green in a statement.