Olympic 800m semi-finalist Claudia Hollingsworth opened her season in style at The Crest while distance runner Josh Phillips took the men’s event in a kicker’s race.
Both races were tactical affairs with significant negative splits on a temperate but slightly windy night.
Hollingsworth ran a controlled race near the front of the field at all times as the pace increased from a pedestrian 76 seconds for the first 400m, through to laps of 70 seconds and then 66 seconds. Seven women were still in contention within the space of a second at the bell, led by Maudie Skyring and Natalie Rule.
Slightly boxed-in on the rail Hollingsworth waited patiently until the home straight for a gap to open up and won comfortably by almost a second in 4:36.53, with a 61.73 second final lap.
“It was a pretty crazy race with people changing the lead. I wasn’t expecting to get out first so it was nice to have somebody to follow… I just tried to stay relaxed and trust the training that I’ve done,” Hollingsworth said in a post-race interview.
“It wasn’t overly quick, but it is nice to get out here to test the fitness.”
Skyring was second in 4:37.46 with Jaylah Hancock-Cameron taking bronze in 4:37.93.
The men’s race started at a similar dawdle with a 72 second first lap being slower than 10km pace for a number of the field. A 64 second next lap – closer to 3km pace – did little to separate the field, but things gradually increased from there with a 58 second penultimate lap, albeit leaving the whole field within 1.2 seconds.
Coming into the home straight it was still almost anybody’s race in the sprint to the line. Ultimately Josh Phillips, known more as a longer distance runner but with a solid 3:43/4:01 1500m/Mile personal bests, who prevailed in 4:10.56.
Leaving aside the first 9.34m, Phillips’s two 800m splits were 2:13.62 and 1:54.83.
WA’s Max Shervington took silver in 4:10.69, with NSW’s Archie Ridgeway taking bronze in 4:10.91.
In interesting circumstances the first three places in the B-race ran faster than the A-race, led by ACT’s John Maguire with 4:07.86. However, the races were not timed finals for the Australian title, with only the A-race having championship status.
The feature race of the meet was the women’s 800m, set up for Abbey Caldwell to have an attempt on the world indoor qualifying standard of 2 minutes flat. The requested opening pace of 57.5 seconds didn’t eventuate, with Caldwell running practically even splits of 60.88 and 60.99 for a easy 2:01.86 victory from Tess Kirsopp-Cole (2:03.53) and Ellie Sandford (2:04.19).
“I’ve actually never raced on an indoor track so I think if I qualified and got selected it was going to be a luxury to take and a really good opportunity,” Caldwell said of the World Indoor Championships in March.
“But if that doesn’t come, then so be it – we have to focus on Nationals and have to be in shape domestically. It would have been nice to get over to China for a debut Worlds, but if it’s not in the season, it’s not the end of it.”
In the men’s race 17-year-old Daniel Williams was impressive in negatively splitting his was to a one-second victory in 1:47.56 ahead of Jye Perrott (1:48.53) and Mason Cohen (1:49.53). Williams’s laps were 54.40 seconds and 53.17 seconds respectively.
$16,000 in prize money was awarded at the meet thanks to host club Bankstown Sports.
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