Parafed Otago have great showing at the 2016 NZ Track and Field Championships

The NZ national Athletics championships are a big date in the calendar of many young athletes around New Zealand. This is true for the five Parafed Otago members who competed across the weekend.

All of the athletes competed extremely well with the stand out performance being that of Holly Robinson whose Javelin throw of 40.41 meters is the third furthest ever in the T46 class. Not only that but it is the world leading throw this year! Holly’s attention must surly now be turning to Rio selection.

Holly was not the only great performer this weekend, Anna Grimaldi’s jump of 5.44 meters was a wind assisted PB and was good enough to earn her 5th place in the open women’s competition. She backed that up with a solid jump of 5.22 meters in winning the para class.

Jess Hamill, Paralympic and Commonwealth games ‘vet’ took out the Para Shot put with a fantastic throw of 7.60 which was just 23cm shy of her silver medal winning throw at last year’s World Championships.

Caitlin Dore, F36 came second to Holly in the Para Javelin competition but threw 22.30 which is a huge 4m improvement on her recorded personal best and reflects the hard work that has gone in over the past few months.

It is proven that Otago has great throwing capabilities and this was backed up once again by Shaun Markham’s 3rd place in the F36 Men’s Para Discus competition and finishing 8th overall.

A big congratulations should go to all athletes and let’s hope we can continue to build on our tradition of producing great track and field athletes with the Autumn Athletics program starting this Thursday at 6pm at the Caledonian track in Dunedin