06.04.2009

Birmingham, Tamsett up to speed in Carlsbad

Australians Collis Birmingham and Lara Tamsett have scored top-five finishes at the Carlsbad 5000 event in California at the weekend.

Birmingham finished a career-high fifth in the men’s invitational road race, crossing the line in 13.27 to post his fastest ever time at the Carlsbad event.

Fellow Australians Ben St Lawrence and Youcef Abdi finished the 5000m run in 13th and 19th places respectively.

In his inaugural international road race and first hit-out on US soil St Lawrence crossed the line in 14.05, while steeplechase specialist Abdi, showing no sign of the calf injury that hampered his run at the Australian Athletics Championships in Brisbane last month, ran home in 14.56.

Ethiopia’s Bekana Daba took out the elite men’s event in 13.19, followed by countrymen Abreham Cherkos (13.19), Maregu Zewdie (13.24) and Ali Abdosh (13.25) in a hard-fought race to the line.

Bekana made his move 300m from home, outsprinting Beijing Olympics 5000m finalist Cherkos and defending Carlsbad champion Zewdie to claim line honours.

In the elite women’s field, Lara Tamsett took out third place just four seconds off the pace set by Ethiopian winner Aheza Kiros.

Twenty-year-old Tamsett crossed the line in 15.42 behind 2007 world championships representative Kiros (15.38) and Beijing Olympics 1500m finalist Shannon Rowbury (15.41) of the USA.

Competing in just her first international road race Tamsett’s result at the Carlsbad event shows she will be a competitive force on the senior circuit, running out a tight finish to better her personal best track time by 20 seconds.

The win was Kiros’ first over Rowbury, the pair matching it stride for stride over the last 200 meters before Kiros stepped it up a gear in the final metres.

For more information on the Carlsbad 5000, click here.