Athletics PNG (APNG)

With the PNG Games in November 2021, the PNG Air National Championships will be held from June 25 to 28 in Kimbe in order to ease the burden on travelling teams.

“Experience has shown that few teams can afford to travel to events in the lead up to a PNG Games hence the National Championships will be staged during the second term holiday,” said APNG secretary, Philip Rehder.

“Athletics PNG has begun rotating the event between Port Moresby and Kimbe as these are the only two centres with an all-weather track.

The firm has pledged K17,000 worth of meat products over the course of the year. 

APNG said Prima has been supporting athletics for a number of years by way of providing their meat products for training camps in Lae and Goroka.

“This is a significant boost to the programme,” said camp coordinator, Philip Kamane, who is a former distance runner.

“Whilst we have a grant from World Athletics to cover some major expenses such as accommodation, we have to supplement that with local support and our sponsors like PNG Air and Prima are very important to us.”

Aliel was midway through his final semester last year when the sponsors, in close consultation with South Western Community College and the relevant national bodies, made the decision to bring their Pacific Island students home.

Hure was in the first year of his two-year programme.

Aliel said he was very much looking forward to completing his studies at South Western, a sentiment expressed by Hure who said he was excited to go back and finish what he had started.

This follows the approval granted by the PNG Sports Foundation’s Pandemic Management Committee to the Sport of Athletics to resume its training and competition programme with COVID-19 safe protocols in place.

The event had been scheduled for August 29 and 30 however, the decision was made on August 21 to defer the event by two weeks to complete the approval process and ensure the necessary organisational arrangements were in place.

Benjamin Aliel and Roland Hure began their season for Southwestern Community College with a Meet in Maryville Missouri. Aliel clocked a very solid 49.13 seconds for the 400m which is a great start to the season for him. Hure was also in good form, clocking 7.06secs for the 60m dash and recording a best long jump of 6.81m.

The three-day meet is scheduled to run from Friday November 15^th to the 18^th at the Sasi Muthuvel Stadium.

It will be the second time this year for Athletics PNG (APNG) to bring a major event to Kimbe and the Provincial Administration is again lending its support by way of the provision of resource personnel to assist in preparations.

APNG president, Tony Green, says the local organising committee has been hard at work with Nolene Pidik, coordinating administrative preparations.

With most of its available resources directed towards team preparation for the Games and related lead up competitions, Athletics PNG decided to schedule its Regional and National Championships in the last third of the year.

The PNG Air NGI Regional Championships kicked off in Kavieng on Friday with events for the youngsters and the main program being held on Saturday and Sunday.

Teams were expected to travel in from East and West New Britain with over 100 athletes in total, however it was reported that rough sea conditions have caused many to cancel their travel plans.

Speaking to the athletes, Westley said he was born in East New Britain and his family moved to Cairns when he was eight years old. Soon afterwards his father died of cancer, so his mom raised him and his two siblings.

He turned to sports to help him deal with losing his hero and father. At 18, he was picked up by Canberra Raiders and he played there for seven years, won an NRL grand final and represented PNG at the World Cup and other rugby tests. He played for another three years with two other NRL clubs.  

Toea Wisil recently went viral with her Facebook post when she called out APNG and president Tony Green for intimidating athletes into submission as well as feeding them biscuits, especially during the Oceania Championships held in Cairns (June 24-28) in a post titled “Not Keeping it Quiet”.

“Athletes been eating Snax biscuits for breakfast and lunch before coming to Oceania and hungry while here. I am putting it out for the people to know what is going on in our sports.”