10.09.2008

Indigenous honours for Angeline

18 year old Angeline Blackburn has just returned from Bydgoszcz, Poland where she competed as a member of the Australian team in the 12^th IAAF World Junior Athletics Championship. Of Monero descent, she was proud to singly represent the talented Athletics Australia’s Indigenous Jump Start to London 2012 Team.  Angeline is also a long-standing ACT Academy of Sport Scholarship holder and more recently a trialing Australian Institute of Sport athlete.

Angeline ran both the Women’s 400 metre individual and the 4 x 400 metre relay events.  In the 400 metre individual she achieved outstanding results progressing from a first place in her heat with a personal best time of 53.83 seconds, an automatic progression from her semi-final to the 400 final after finishing second with another personal best time of 52.9 seconds and ultimately finishing in 6^th place in the final.

In the 4 x 400 metre relay Angeline ran the anchor leg for both the heat and the final running a credible 51.8 seconds. Other team members Brittney McGlone, Trychelle Kingdom, Olivia Tauro and Angeline all ran very strong performances considering each had ran four races prior to the relay final. The team finished third to pick up a well-earned bronze medal, running 3.34.23, just .03 of a second behind the Ukrainian team.

It has been an eventful, but exciting year for Angeline as she combines her athletics training commitments with a part-time double Arts and Science Degree at ANU University, Canberra.  In July 2008 Angeline received recognition of her achievement when she received the ACT NAIDOC Indigenous Youth of the Year Award, and joint National NAIDOC Indigenous Youth of the Year Award.

Angeline first held the Australian National title for Under 20’s Women’s 400 metres when she was 15 years old, and has since shown rapid improvement under the coaching guidance of Tudor Bidder, AIS 400 high performance coach.  Angeline ran a strong 400 metres in this year’s NSW Open Athletics Championship to take the 400m title and performed solidly over the Australian Open Athletics domestic series, culminating with an outstanding win in the Australian Under 20’s National Athletics Championship held on the Gold Coast where she ran her 5^th seasonal world junior qualifier in the 400 metres.

Angeline never imaged that her running would take her from the dirt bush tracks of Cann River, East Gippsland Victoria where she comes from, to the international athletics tracks of the world where she has now competed in the World Junior championship in Beijing, China in 2006, the IAAF Athletics World Cup Athens in Greece and more recently Bydgoszcz, Poland.  Since moving to Canberra for high school she is now a member of South Canberra Tuggeranong Athletics Club. Angeline undoubtedly owes much of her success and love of running to a strong support group made up of close friends and family.

Angeline is now taking a well-deserved rest in preparation for the coming summer Athletics season and aims to take one step at a time through her transition from junior athletics to the challenge and demands of senior competition.