Terrific Tasmanians Take Tip Top Honours

What an amazing nine days of athletics it’s been for Tasmania!

It has been amazing to witness so much success, and reward for hard work and dedication shared across several areas of our sport. A total of 27 medals were won by junior, para and open athletes in our biggest team ever at the Australian Track and Field Championships. In Sydney, there was national recognition for coach Susan Andrews. In Brisbane, at the AMA Track and Field Championships, two TMA athletes were involved in world records, and in more fantastic news, Peter Lyden was named AMA’s 2021 Coach of the Year.

In Brisbane at the AMA Championships, Sharee Maksimovic was part of a world record-breaking team in the W55 4x100m relay, while Anna Smee was a member of the W45 world-record-breaking team in the W45 4x800m relay team.

Athletics Australia awarded Susan the Coach of the Year Award (Junior Athletes). Susan’s athletes had a very successful championship contributing nine medals to the state’s total.

The 2022 Athletics Tasmania team for the Australian T&F Championships was our biggest ever, with 113 athletes named. In addition, 2022 was our best year ever for medals with 27 (2016, 14 medals; 2017, 16; 2018, 19; 2019, 24; 2021, 17). Among the highlights of the competition were a meet record of 53.20m for Arielle Cannell for gold in the U/15 hammer (she also claimed gold in the U/17 hammer and bronze in the U/15 discus) and Alexander Kwa’s World Junior Qualifier of 9:06.85 for bronze in the U20 3000m steeplechase. Alexander’s PB was also a Tasmanian U20 record for the event. Violet Owen’s gold medal run in the U/14 800m also saw her claim the U/13 and U/14 Tasmanian records for that distance.

In the much anticipated OPEN Men 100m, Jack Hale brought home the bronze medal in a time of 10.20s.

See your 2022 Chemist Warehouse Track & Field Championship medal winners here: https://www.tasathletics.org.au/news/2022_nationals_wrap/

But the medals don’t tell the whole story. State records were set in Sydney by non-medal winners too. And the number of PBs achieved was fantastic! In addition, there were several athletes new to the AT State Team, and we hope to see them all nominating again next year.
A big thank you to AT’s team managers on the ground – Susan Andrews, Gabby Steele and Rob Ballard (relays facilitator) – who put in many long hours at SOPAC to be on hand as needed.

You can read AT’s reports from throughout the National competition over on our Facebook page here.