Maia Ramsden claims a new NZ Record in Paris Semifinal
After placing 6th in heat earning a direct route to the Semi final on Wednesday in Paris, Ramsden gave it her best shot to make the final’s lineup. Despite narrowly missing the top 6 qualifying spot due to a late burst from the two spanish competitor’s Aqueda Marques and Esther Guerrero who edged her out by 0.3 secs for the vital finals berth. While it is only a small consolation of missing the final Ramsden ran a personal best and set a new NZ record of 4.02.20 bettering her previous NZ record and best time of 4.02.58. She has now improved the NZ record by over 2.5 sec during the last few months. Her performances in paris were extremely noteworthy after being only named in the NZL team in early July.
The 22-year-old Wellington athlete who is a Harvard graduate can be well pleased with her special year to date, achieving two major NCAA titles, first NZ rep experience at World Indoors in Glasgow, setting a NZ Indoor record for the 1500m and pushing her performances up the NZ all time rankings for women to now be 2nd in the mile, 4th in 3000m and 6th in 5000m.
Preston misses out in 800m repechage
James Preston who ran 1.48.5 for 8th in his heats yesterday was required to run the repechages today if he was to secure a semifinal post. Sadly for james the fantastic form of earlier in the year when he qualified for Paris by breaking the 62 year old NZ record of Sir Peter Snell seems to be affected by injury in his preparation. James ran 1.50.53 to finish 6th in heat 3 to end his campaign in Paris
