Rivan betters Pulu’s 60m record

 John Rivan started the indoor track season in great form and is edging closer to Peter Pulu’s national record in the 60m sprint. 

Pulu set the record of 6.79 seconds at the 1995 World Indoor Championships in Barcelona and later that year broke  Takale Tuna’s 100m record of 10.60 seconds with a time of 10.40s in Germany during the lead-up to the World Championships in Gothenburg.

Rivan, 21, burst onto the scene as a 15-year-old at the 2008 national championships in Lae when he was a runaway winner in all three sprinting events. He ran a scintillating 6.84s at Grinnell University Iowa last Saturday and followed that up with an impressive 22.26s for the 200m. 

Theo Piniau is coming into good form as well in the 400m, posting a time of 50.30s, compared to the 51.05s he ran at the same meet last year. 

Another athlete in good form in the USA is 19-year-old Adrine Monagi, who is posting impressive performances in a range of events as she prepares for the heptathlon.  

Monagi ran a personal best of 7.71s for the 60m in the heats and the final and followed that up with a huge personal best of 9.16s in the 60m hurdles. 

She cleared 1.57m in the high jump and joined her teammates in the 4x400m relay to cap off another busy day.

A number of athletes were in action in Brisbane at the Glynis Nunn Shield event on Saturday evening.  Donna Koniel set a new personal best of 2 min 12.36 seconds in the 800m and Mowen Boino got his 2015 campaign off to a good start by running away with the 400m hurdles in an impressive time of 52.37s.

Toea Wisil and Miriam Peni won their 200m races in impressive fashion and Betty Burua ran the 400m hurdles for the first time since the 2013 Pacific Mini Games.