13.07.2009

Gold and silver served up in Serbia

The men’s 4 x 400m relay team of Chris Troode, Brendan Cole, Tristan Thomas and Sean Wroe have taken Australia’s gold medal tally to four at the World University Games overnight, making it the best performance by an Australian team in the events 72-year history.

Victorian Kaila McKnight also put in an impressive performance to take out the silver medal in the women’s 1500m event, taking the nation’s total medal tally across all sports in the events history to 100.

Australia’s final medal tally from the World University Championships included four gold and one silver medal, with the earlier gold medal performances of Dani Samuels in the women’s discus, Madeline Pape in the women’s 800m and Thomas in the men’s 400m hurdles.  The result improved on Australia’s previous best performance of two gold and two silver medals at the 1991 and 2007 editions of the championships.

Lining up for the final event of the program the 4 x 400m relay team combined to take the last gold on offer at the World University Games.

Led out by Commonwealth Games gold medalist Chris Troode, who was forced to withdraw from the individual 400m final with a shoulder problem, the team was off to a flying start.

Troode handed the baton to 400m hurdles specialist Brendan Cole who passed it to national 400m hurdles champion Tristan Thomas on route to his second gold medal of the championships.

Having already contested the 100m and 200m events in preparation for his world championships assault, national 400m champion Sean Wroe anchored the team to a convincing win in 3:03.67, well ahead of place getters Poland (3:05.69) and Japan (3:06.46).

Team manager Tudor Bidder was pleased with the result.

“The first three boys ran 45.5 legs which left Sean Wroe way out in the lead to bring it home,” Bidder said.

“Bringing Chris Troode in to run the first leg was an easy decision despite John Burstow performing well in the heat.  Troode is a Commonwealth Games gold medalist and proved, with this run, that had he have been able to compete in the final he would have been in the medals.

“The team’s victory was fantastic and shows Australia’s depth in this event.”

In the men’s 800m final Target 2012 athlete, Lachlan Renshaw ran a competitive race to finish 5th in 1:48.27 behind victor Iranian Sajad Moradi in 1:48.02. It was a hard fought battle with the first four athletes over the line within .6 of a second. Renshaw was unable to get himself into the front group but led the second just .19th of a second behind.

The men’s long jump final saw Queenslander Shaun Fletcher leap 7.70m to finish 6th. Fletcher recorded 6 legal jumps registering his best jump in the third round. Not only was this round productive for Fletcher, but for winner, Korean, Hyeon who leapt a wind assisted 8.41m and was clearly ahead of the pack with 5 leaps over 8m to his name in the competition.

Western Australia had two representatives in the women’s high jump final, Zoe Timmers and Ellen Pettitt. Timmers started well with easy clearances at 1.75m, 1.70m and 1.85m but was unable to get over the bar at 1.88m finishing in 6th place and Pettitt, who finished 12th, cleared 1.75m and 1.80m on her first attempts but was unlucky at 1.85m. The eventual winner was German Ariane Friedrich who leapt 2.00 after entering the competition at 1.91m.

Victorian Liam Adams finished 10th in a close 5000m final in 14:12.86, well outside his personal best time of 13:46.92 recorded in Melbourne in March. The slow early pace didn’t suit the World Cross Country representative who managed to stay with the main pack but was well behind Halil Akkas from Turkey who took the gold in 14:06.96.

The European season continues tonight with Australian’s Fabrice Lapierre and John Steffensen in action at the Athens Grand Prix before Olympic gold medalist Steve Hooker lines up for his second event of the season in Reims, France on Tuesday night.

For all of the results from Belgrade click here.