Athletes’ form picks up

A NUMBER of PNG Athletes competed well last weekend in their buildup for next month’s Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast.
The highlights of the weekend events were victory for Ephraim Lerkin at the Victorian State Championships in Melbourne and a huge indoor personal best 200m time of 21.67secs for Wesley Logorava at the Junior College National Championships in Texas, the United States.
Lerkin won the 400m hurdles at the championships in 51.85secs with Mowen Boino third in 52.40, a very good effort by both athletes, who each won their respective semifinal races on Saturday in 53.24 and 52.61secs respectively.
Debono Paraka won the discus competition in the last of the season’s inter club meets in Brisbane with 50.13m, his second best throw this season.
Rellie Kaputin and Afure Adah will be competing at the NCAA Division 2 Indoor National Championships in Kansas this weekend.
For Kaputin this will be her last competition of an outstanding career at West Texas A&M University.
Meanwhile, Brisbane-based Nazmie Lee Marai ran his first ever indoor race on Saturday at the World Indoor Championships in the UK City of Birmingham, clocking 7.01 secs for 60m.
This was an excellent run by Marai, who finished sixth in a top class field of eight.
Marai wrote a letter of thanks to Athletics PNG yesterday to express his appreciation for the opportunity to represent his country at that high level.
He said it was a great experience and eye opener to see such great athletes close up and he was now in a much better mindset knowing how much work needed to be done to be competitive at the Commonwealth Games.