02.03.2008

Fourteen in, now for the rest

As victory to exciting 400m talent Joel Milburn closed the 86th edition of the Australian Championships, the national selectors faced the business end of their weekend.

The meet, doubling as the trials for this year’s Olympic Games in Beijing, provided an insightful selection of performances to encourage – or discourage – decisions at the selection table.

Before this weekend, Luke Adams (20km walk), Nathan Deakes (50km walk), Steve Hooker (pole vault), Craig Mottram (5000m), Jana Rawlinson (400m hurdles), Adam Rutter (50km walk), Jared Tallent (20km and 50km walks) and Kellie Wapshott (20km walk) were assured of their spots by way of results.

In Brisbane, Jarrod Bannister (javelin), Alana Boyd (pole vault), Tamsyn Lewis (400m and 800m), Donna MacFarlane (3000m steeplechase), Dani Samuels (discus) and Kylie Wheeler (heptathlon) satisfied the selection criteria and as good as booked their flights, adding a national title to two A-qualifiers.

Lewis’ 400m was arguably the most poignant, winning her final with a second A-qualifier and saving the ‘what if’ and ‘what now’ scenarios that other athletes may have to ponder from here.

The men’s 400m is a particularly interesting one with John Steffensen holding five A-qualifiers, Sean Wroe the required two and Milburn one – yet the latter beat Steffensen and Wroe for the Australian title on Saturday night.

Truth is, healthy top-shelf competition is what the selectors yearn in such an important year.

Athletics Australia’s chairman of selectors Peter Fitzgerald confirmed before the action-packed final session that the panel had made progressive decisions at the end of each day with some key ones to come.

“In some ways, we’ve sort of thought it’s been a relatively easy team to pick because there’s people with two As that can pick themselves, there’s a number of others who again seem to pick themselves - even though they might not be automatics - and then there seems to have been a little bit of gap between that and probably the end of the line,” he said.

“We haven’t had to have too many vigorous debates about putting people in.”

Relay squads often generate a lot of interest and debate and this year will be no different. Take the terrific depth of the men’s 400m with the team of Milburn, Wroe, Daniel Batman, Dylan Grant and Mark Ormrod to leave Australia on Sunday to compete indoors in Spain next weekend.

Then there’s the men’s 100m, which heralded a surprise national champion in Otis Gowa after a domestic season, well, full of surprises.

“There are some decisions being made at the moment,” Fitzgerald said. “The rest of the relays will be finalised tonight, decisions made, but I can’t say what they are because they’ll be announced with this part of the team hopefully some time between mid-week and next weekend.”

Athletics Australia will nominate its team to the Australian Olympic Committee by June 23, the date of the final selectors’ meeting, with the absolute deadline of July 4.

Visit athletics.com.au for the latest news and developments on the road to Beijing.

View all of the results from the Selection Trials and 86th Australian Championships here