In a boost for Australian athletics the Melbourne Track Classic has been granted Continental Tour Gold status by World Athletics.
The meet will be held at Lakeside Stadium in Melbourne on Thursday 23 February under the new name of the Maurie Plant Meet, in the week following the World Cross Country Championships in Bathurst. The status for the meet means that Melbourne will return to being the host of the most prestigious held in Australia each year, with international athletes competing at scale in Melbourne for the first time since 2017 during the short lived Nitro Athletics series.
The World Athletics Contintental Tour Gold series includes meets of the calibre of Tokyo, Turku, Budapest, New York and Ostrava and bring to Australia considerable benefits for athletes and fans:
- Category A meet for World Athletics Rankings, which are important for qualifying for the World Championships
- A minimum US$200,000 in prize money
- A minimum of 15% of the athletes participating in the meet will be from outside Oceania
- In at least 12 of the events, a minimum of 3 athletes from the Top 50 in the world (3 per country basis) to participate
- An expectation from World Athletics of at least 3,000 spectators at the meet
The meet has been renamed in memory of Maurie Plant, who died in 2020. Plant was a colourful identity in Australian athletics, most known for his role as Athletics Australia’s international athlete liaison, a booming voice as a meet commentator and for supporting the careers of numerous athletes on the international circuit, including Cathy Freeman, Steve Hooker and Sally Pearson.
The Melbourne Track Classic had previously been part of the IAAF World Athletics Tour until the mid-2010s, but towards the end of that period was overtaken by the Sydney Track Classic, and then more recently, the Brisbane Track Classic, as the top performing meet of the Australian domestic season.
Recent Posts:
- Louison-Roe gets her gold as Australia closes out Eugene with six medals
Two years ago in Lima, Izobelle Louison-Roe was the surprise. A 17-year-old clearing a personal best 1.89m to take silver behind Angelina Topic, with nothing much expected and nothing much to lose. In Eugene she was the favourite, and that is a very different job. She did it anyway: 1.92m, first attempt, a clean card - No walk in the park: Beacroft sets World U20 record in claiming goldNine days after Commonwealth gold at Scotstoun — and a night out with the Australian team — Isaac Beacroft has completed the double at Hayward Field, breaking the world U20 record for the 5000m walk. It completes a double almost no one attempts, let alone lands. Nine days earlier the 19-year-old had outkicked Kenya’s Stephen
- Buchanan, Campbell claim City2Surf honoursAndy Buchanan and Holly Campbell have honed their preparations for races later this month by taking out one of the world’s largest running event: Sydney’s City2Surf. Buchanan clocked 40:27 to win the 14km race from Sydney’s Hyde Park to the iconic Bondi Beach, finishing over 30 seconds ahead of Luke Hince. “I really enjoyed that
- Twice the climb, half the mercy: Ballarat raises the stakes in 2026The mud pits, mounds and logs will be familiar. The hills will not. The Australian Cross Country Championships returns to Victoria Park in Ballarat on 22 August with a course that, on paper at least, looks considerably more demanding than the one athletes tackled 12 months ago. While many of the artificial obstacles remain, the
- Five minutes: Australia’s mixed relay broke a World U20 record, then Great Britain bettered itAustralia’s mixed 4x100m relay held the inaugural World U20 record for about as long as it takes to walk from the finish line to the top of the mixed zone. Uwezo Lubenda, Maya Taber, Kelechi Ekwomadu and Thewbelle Philp won the first of the two morning heats at Hayward Field and stopped the clock at
