An Australian women’s 4x100m relay team consisting of Sally Pearson, Charlotte van Veenendaal, Laura Whaler and Melissa Breen have run well under the 44.00 seconds required to book them a spot at the world championships.
Finishing second at the Golden Grand Prix meet in Kawazaki, Japan behind a national record of 43.39 seconds set by Japan, the quartet clocked 43.69 seconds. The performance is the fastest by an Australian quartet for four years and ranks as the 17th fastest ever by an Australian team.
The performance comes as a relief after the quartet had narrowly missed the qualifying standard at the Sydney Track Classic and Australian Junior Championships with runs of 44.02 seconds and 44.05 seconds respectively.
“You have no idea how excited we are,” Pearson said.
“It took so long for the time to appear on the big screen but once we knew were just jumping, screaming and hugging on the back straight.
“Today was the last chance we had to clock the qualifier and we did it – bring on Daegu.”
In the field the top result was Mitchell Watt, who finished second in the long jump with a leap of 8.07m. Leading until the final round, Germany’s Tyrone Smith took the lead and victory in the final round with a jump of 8.09m. Former world junior champion Robbie Crowther was fourth with a new personal best jump of 8.03m in what was a close competition.
On the track Brendan Cole and Lauren Boden clocked season bests in winning the 400m hurdles, with Cole running 49.60 seconds and Boden 55.86 seconds; Kim Collins edged out Aaron Rouge-Serret 10.40 to 10.42 in the men’s 100m (-0.8 m/s); Matt Davies recorded a season best of 20.93 seconds for fourth in the 200m (-0.1 m/s), with Sean Wroe (21.55s) and Kevin Moore (21.77s) sixth and seventh respectively; National champion James Kaan was second in the 800m in 1:47.25, with James Gurr fourth in 1:48.54; the Australian men’s 4x100m was fifth in 39.53 seconds; and Melissa Breen was third in the 100m in 11.56 seconds (-0.4 m/s).
In the field Kerrie Perkins (6.34m), Jessica Penney (6.15m) and Linda Allen (6.12m) were fifth, sixth and seventh respectively in the women’s long jump, while Hamish Peacock was seventh in the men’s javelin in 70.73m.
