Kamau off to the US for meets

By PATRICIA KEAMO
ONE of the country’s top track athletes Leroy Kamau left for the United States of America yesterday to compete at several meets.
Prior to that, Kamau was training under former Pacific Games 200m champion Nelson Stone in Port Moresby.
Athletics PNG (APNG) president Tony Green told The National that Kamau would be based in the US for two months to compete in regular competitions.
Green said they were still working on Kamau’s competition schedule, however, he was getting there early to settle in and prepare for his meets.
“He is our top male sprinter who dominated the 100m, 200m and 400m events at the National Championships in Port Moresby last December,” Green said.
“Unfortunately, due to the Covid-19 situation, it was not possible for him to go to Australia to compete.”
“Leroy is in very good form after training with Stone for more than a year and we want to see what he can do when exposed to some good competitions.”
“There are a lot of good competitions in California and Texas next month and into June and we expect that Leroy will be in the US for about two months.”
Green highlighted Kamau’s performance in last year’s West New Britain Athletics Championship where Kamau clocked a time of 21.15s in the men’s 200m heats.
“This was the fastest 200m ever recorded in the country by a Papua New Guinean,” he said.
“The PNG all-time best performance list shows that in the 60-year history of Athletics PNG, only national record holder Theo Piniau (20.97) and Nelson Stone (21.09) have run faster times, and they each did so on only one occasion.
“Theo achieved this time after three years in the US on scholarship and Nelson also during his career spent several extended periods of training and competition in Australia.
“His (Kamau’s) travel to the US is for him to show us what he can do.
“We have to provide our top athletes with opportunities to compete, otherwise, they are going to take up other sports.
“Rugby is very popular in PNG today.”