New Zealand's best 800m in 20 years comes to Christchurch

The best 800m field seen in New Zealand since the 1990 Auckland Commonwealth Games will assemble in Christchurch this Thursday to race the feature More FM event at the International Track Meet.

The event’s star is undoubtedly Olympic 1500m silver medallist Nick Willis, who has publicly stated his goal in Delhi this year is to not only defend his Commonwealth 1500m crown, but to emulate the legendary Peter Snell and add the 800m crown as well. [Snell won the imperial equivalents, the half-mile and mile, at the Empire Games in Perth in 1962].

Aiming to throw a spanner in the works at Willis’ home track meet will be top Australians Jeff Riseley and Jeremy Roff, who unexpectedly claimed the scalps of Willis and Kenya’s Olympic gold medallist Asbel Kiprop in the 1500m race at the Melbourne Grand Prix 10 days ago. Willis said when he flew into Christchurch today “That was a bit of a shock – I’ll definitely be out for some revenge on Thursday”. With Irish 800-1500 champion David Campbell, 4-times Australian champion Nick Bromley, and Canadian Geoff Harris also in the field, there are six athletes with personal bests of 1min47sec or faster – the strongest field since Auckland 1990, when British middle distance legend Sebastian Coe, in the twilight of his career, finished 6th in 1min47.24s.

Meet Director Craig Motley said “This is a phenomenal field to come together for a meet of this scale, and we are expecting to see some pretty fast times”. Willis and Riseley in particular should be very evenly matched – their personal bests are just 6/100ths of a second different from each other, and both are just over a second outside Peter Snell’s New Zealand record, set when he smashed the world record at Lancaster Park in 1962.

Also competing in the discus event at the meet will be former world champion and twice Commonwealth champion Beatrice Faumuina, against the current world champion Dani Samuels.

Tickets are on sale at QEII Stadium now, and at the gate on the night. Adults are $12, children 12 & under $6, and under-5's are free. Premium allocated Gold Seating is $20. The international section of the programme starts at 6.30pm - go to www.internationaltrackmeet.co.nz for more details.