Olympic bar high: Green

By PATRICIA KEAMO
ATHLETICS Papua New Guinea president Tony Green says Olympic qualification standards have risen to the point where “it is very unlikely that we will have a qualified (track and field) athlete” for the Tokyo Games.
He told The National that they would select the country’s best athlete, which would be determined by the world rankings, to compete for qualification.
“For the 2000 Sydney Olympics, 11.60 seconds would have been a B qualifier for the women’s 100m,” Green said.
“By Beijing 2008, the standard was 11.42s.
“For Tokyo, it is 11.15s.
“Toea Wisil’s national record is 11.29s.
“So for her to run 11.15s is very difficult even if these were normal times and she had regular access to good competition.
“When you add the difficulties of flying around to competitions, the task becomes even more daunting.”
For the women’s long jump, Green said national record holder Rellie Kaputin’s best was 6.50m which would have been enough to qualify for the 2000 Games.
However, the standard for Tokyo is 6.83m.
“Being realistic, it is very unlikely that we will have a qualified athlete,” Green said.
“We will select our best athlete and this will be determined by reference to the world rankings. By June this year, the athlete with the highest world ranking will be the one we (APNG) nominate to the PNG Olympic Committee for selection.”
Green said Kaputin was based in Australia and she would be competing in some high-level meets over the coming weeks which would give her the opportunity to improve her ranking.
Wisil, on the other hand, is based at the National Sports Institute (NSI) in Goroka.