Samuels, Hough and Wassall shine in Sydney

NSWIS athletes Dani Samuels, Nicholas Hough and Georgia Wassall have produced season best efforts at the Sydney Track Classic on the weekend, to boost their credentials for the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in July.

Hitting her career fourth-best mark of 65.18m in the women’s discus, Dani Samuels again declared to the Commonwealth she is the woman to beat, reaching the Commonwealth Games A-Standard on four occasions in her six throw series.

Samuels said she was delighted by her consistency and suggested she was capable of more in the coming months. “I’m extremely happy with another throw like that, I’ve only had a handful that big in my career so to be consistently around that mark in 2014 is very reassuring,” Samuels said.

“I’m hoping it’s a sign of things to come in the next few weeks and into the European season. I haven’t had a new personal best since 2010 so it would be great to throw something bigger than 65.84m soon.”

Hough signalled his return to peak form with a second place finish in the men’s 110m hurdles, pushing US world champion David Oliver to a time of 13.38s.

Having laboured at the Perth Track Classic and NSW State Championships earlier this year, Hough surged out of the blocks setting up a season’s best 13.65s to move to number four in the Australian all time list.

The 20-year-old was pleased with the performance and was looking forward to a rematch with Oliver in a fortnight’s time.

“There was so much adrenaline going on…it was a bit of a blur. I collected a few (hurdles) out there and was a bit messy over a few, but I was just trying to attack them and hopefully in a couple of week time if I’m a bit cleaner…I might get a faster time,” Hough said.

“It was definitely very inspiring racing Oliver. He is running in Melbourne so {I’ll have} another fantastic opportunity to line up against him and try and lower my time even more.”

Emerging 800m runner Georgia Wassall continued her impressive start to the season lowering her personal best time and achieving qualifying standards in a busy program.

On Saturday, she sliced nearly a second from her 800 metres personal best to clock 2:01.78 to place second to current world champion Eunice Sum of Kenya. 

She beat home a strong field of Australasian athletes recording the second fastest 800m time in Australian junior history, as well as breaking the NSW junior record and achieving qualifying standards for the IAAF World Junior Championships and the Commonwealth Games.

That preceded an impressive display in the women’s 800m at the Australian Junior Championships where she claimed gold in a time of 2:04.45.

“That’s a massive run, I can’t believe what I was able to execute out there, I am so happy. My training has been going so well and it’s so good to be able to put something together here and show that my hard work has paid off,” Wassall said.

“I now need to talk and figure out which road to go down, but I’ll be going overseas somewhere. I’ve got a lot of thinking to do. I’m sure we will make the right decision for the long term, just not sure what that is now.”

For a full list of results from the Sydney Track Classic click here