12.06.2009

Foster's fine form continues in Fayetteville

Ryan Foster has made yet another remarkable breakthrough at the NCAA Championships at the University of Arkansas in the USA this morning.
 
The 20-year-old Tasmanian ran the fastest 800m time by an Australian this year, clocking 1:46.78 to place second in his semi-final and gain automatic qualification for Sunday’s final, where he will line up as third-fastest qualifier.
 
Sitting second at the bell, the Sandy Bay athlete passed through the 400m mark in 51.53, eventually finishing behind Andrew Wheating of the University of Oregon, who won the race in 1:46.21.
 
Foster's performance ranks him as the 28th fastest Australian 800m runner in history and puts him just .18 seconds off a B-qualifying time for this year's track and field world titles in Berlin.
 
Foster has now taken close to four seconds off his personal best time over 800m since accepting a scholarship to Penn State University last July. 

See Foster live at the NCAA Championships here.

In other results overnight at the NCAA Championships...

In the men's 1500m Matt Gibney ran a sensible tactical race to automatically qualify for the final. Gibney ran in fifth position for much of the race before moving into the automatic qualifying spots in the last 300m. The Villanova student finished third, shaving one hundredth of a second off his personal best to clock 3:41.70.

Like the 800m, the men's 1500m could see a fast race in the final. The field is deep, with 3:42.09 being the slowest non-automatic qualifier for the final. The favourite appears to be German Fernandez, who took out Gibney's heat, whilst the other heat winners, Craig Miller (3:39.36) and Garreth Heath (3:44.22 with a 53.32 final lap) are amongst the other contenders in a fairly wide open field.

After the first day of the heptathlon, Megan Wheatley is placed in 12th place on 3370 points, 293 points behind the leader Nia Ali. Wheatley's first day total is 181 points less than when she set her personal best in May, with her performances well down on all of the events other than the high jump (100m H: 14.18 vs 13.76; HJ: 1.69m vs 1.69m; Shot: 12.70m vs 13.49m; 200m: 25.21 vs 24.47).

Despite running a season's best of 2:04.68, Zoe Buckman was unable to reproduce the form which saw her finish fourth in last year's championships, finishing sixth in her semi-final of the 800m to miss qualifying for the final.

Richard Welsh (Athletics Tasmania) and Tim McGrath (Inside Athletics)