London calls Wisil, Stone

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The National, Thursday 12th July, 2012

ELITE sprinters Toea Wisil and Nelson Stone will be Papua New Guinea’s representatives in athletics at the Olympic Games in London.
They will compete in the 100m and 400m respectively.
Their selection was confirmed yesterday following the passing of the deadline for athletes to hit qualifying times in their events.
As beneficiaries of International Olympic Committee training scholarships, Wisil and Stone were always favourites to get the nod ahead of other athletes but the opportunity had to be given to others to try and run the qualifying times, Athletics PNG president Tony Green said.
“Wisil has been in consistent form all year and is clearly PNG’s top female athlete at the moment although Betty Burua has shown that she has the ability to challenge for that position and will take great confidence from her 400m performance at Loughborough last Saturday,” he said. 
“Toea has done a lot of good training sessions recently  with the world’s  number one female athlete Sally Pearson and is aiming to reach a peak by the time the athletics competition gets under way in London on Aug 3.”
Stone is determined to get back to the sort of form that saw him break the 400m national record at the Commonwealth Games in 2010, where he timed 46.70 seconds. 
His best time this year is 47.01sec at the Queensland Championships in March.
A groin injury at the National Championships in Lae a week later set back his preparations for London, but a 47.84sec run at the McCain Birmingham Games on Sunday where he finished second indicates that Stone is back on track. 
Toea Wisil was in action again at the Birmingham Games, winning the 100m in 11.61sec.
The athletes will compete again at the Welsh International Games in Cardiff on July 18, an event that is expected to feature a significant number of international athletes.
Both Boino and Burua will compete there as well.
 “While Mowen and Betty are in good form and they wish to try and improve their personal best times, and I am delighted they have agreed to stay on for the meet at Cardiff,” Green said.
He paid tribute to Boino for producing a series of great performances since February, including three sub-51sec runs in the 400m hurdles and 11 sub-52s performances.
“Mowen has been a wonderful ambassador for PNG and has made a huge contribution to raising the profile of PNG Athletics with his performances in Australia, Belgium and the UK.  He should feel very proud of his achievements this year.”