There is about one week left before the World Para Championships in Dubai from November 7-15. Our own T36 multi world champion, James Turner, will be contesting the 100m and 400m.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Athletics came as a lucky break for James. Originally he was destined to play in the 7-a-side para football team, and was disappointed when his team failed to qualify for Rio. As luck would have it, he turned his attention to track and the rest is history.
James is already a gold medal winner for the 200m, 400m and the 800m from the 2017 Para World Championships in London. In those championships, James broke the 200m record twice in 24 hours, setting the record in the heats of 24.15sec and then later breaking his own record by 0.06sec. He also has the Paralympic 800m record of 2min 02.39sec set in Rio 2016.
Because of his contribution to para sports James was later awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia. The whole of Wollongong wishes you all the best mate.
Many parents across all representative sports are fully aware of the high cost of providing every opportunity to their talented child in their chosen sport. Athletics, especially is one of those sports, and can cost parents several thousand dollars over a season.
Athletics Wollongong is crucially aware of the sacrifices many of our parents undertake to provide the best training and competition opportunities for their talented offspring. To this end, our club organises a number of fund-raisers to at least alleviate some of that cost. Our most recent fund-raiser was a resoundingly successful sausage sizzle stall at Bunnings Warehouse.
Final figures aren't in as yet, but our club is especially grateful to the support of the members of the public purchasing from the stall, club members for providing the labour and support for the stall and to the generosity of Bunnings for the provision of facilities. We highly recommend Bunnings as a fund-raising venue.
Our club also wishes to thank the generosity of the Bernie Regan Sporting Memorial Trust for the selection of two of our talented young club athletes to receive generous sporting grants towards recouping some of the costs to parents during the last athletics season. Karlee Symonds is a well-known and respected parathlete, particularly in the southern Wollongong area.
Karlee, who is visually impaired, recently won bronze in the U16-U19 Para Girls 100m final at the ACPE NSW All Schools Championships in Homebush to add to her list of successes, one of which was as a 16-year-old in February this year setting new Australian and Oceania Under 20 records in the T11 in the 100m, 200m and 400m.
The other recipient was Lara Check. Lara is an exceptionally talented junior heptathlete and individual events competitor and has had an exceptionally busy year. It included two Nationals in Hobart, one in Qld, one in Sydney, an AIS national squad training camp, four state carnivals in Sydney, one state carnival in Dubbo and a regional carnival in Canberra . A tremendous well done ladies.
On Saturday, October 19, Wollongong played host to the NSW Police and Emergency Services Games at Beaton Park. Non police and emergency folk were also invited to compete. One of our own, Anthony Howlett in the 50+ division, did exceptionally well. He won nine individual gold medals including the high jump - 1:50m, 100 metres - 13:93sec, long jump - 4:29m, 1500 metres - 5:31:07sec, shot put - 9:16m, 200 metres - 29:45sec, javelin - 44:20 (which was 4 metres better than he threw Wednesday night beforehand). 400 metres - 1:04:76sec and the discus - 31:45 metres. He also teamed up with three Cessnock officers to form a relay team, winning silver in that event also.
Over the last two weekends, two rounds of the Treloar Shield clubs competition were held. Round 2 at SOPAC and Round three under trying conditions at the Campbelltown track.
In Round 2, Zoe Daniels in the Open Women's 1kg discus class threw a whopping 40.79 metres to score silver and Gabriel Bickel was a whisker away from placings coming 8th in an enormous field in the open men's 100m in 11.56sec.
In Round 3 at Campbelltown, Delta Amidzovski as an Under 13 competitor competed in the open women's 200m hurdles and was 1st in 30.08sec, 60m sprint 9th 7.87sec and long jump 2nd 5.19m.
Hannah Crinnion in the Open Women's 200m was 9th in 26.40sec, long jump 1st 5.34m.
Paris Bamford in the Open Women's 200m was 15th in 26.99sec.
Montse Ros, a masters women's pole vault specialist came 1st with 2.80m.
Naomi Robinson is a much loved para athlete in our community. She has a bright and inspiring personality and is much respected by all who come in contact with her.
Naomi enjoyed the Special Olympics Sydney South Athletics Competition at Sylvania Waters on Sunday, October 21, and competed in four events: Shot Put - 2nd, 50m walk - 2nd, Discus - 3rd, 400m walk - 5th, and then she participated the next day in the Sky's the Limit Mini Olympics at Beaton Park and had another great day of athletics. Tremendous work Naomi.
