Victorian 5000m Championships

The naming of the Tom Kelly Athletics Track saw two tactical championship races on Thursday, 6th of November, and two very different winning tactics. The Women’s Championships saw a pack of five athletes, including MUAC’s Sophie Barker establish an early lead, off a steady pace. The pack was wittled down to four with Courtney Powell, Amelia Aslianides and Tarli Bird with Barker at the 4000m mark.  Powell’s gradual increase in pace created a gap to Aslianides, whose persistence kept the gap from growing,  with Barker and Bird fighting for third. Powell (Box Hill) took the title for the second year in a row, with Aslianides (Glenhuntly) claiming silver and Barker (MUAC) Bronze.

The Men’s Championship was full of international representatives, despite the late withdrawal of Olympian David McNeill, with Nick Earl and Martin Mashford representing MUAC.  A steady opening 3000m was interrupted by a withering surge out of the pack from World Cross Country Representative Liam Adams who put more than 50m into the field in the 7th lap, with the pack coming through in 8:47. Taking up the chase was Mitch Brown, Stephen Dinneen and World Junior Representative Zak Patterson. The second pack contained MUAC’s Earl. With two laps remaining Adams had stretched his lead to more than 70m over the chasing duo of Brown and Patterson, and through the bell Adams had a lead close to 50m. Patterson, a couple of steps ahead of Brown, was relentlessly chasing him down and went straight past with 170m to go to take the Championship. A scorching final lap of sub 60 seconds gave him a time of 14:11. MUAC’s Earl finished in 6th with 14:33 (PB) and Mashford took 14th in 15:14 for his first track race of the season.

In the lower grade races Ian Lawford and Max Ueda duelled across separate races with Lawford edging out Ueda by a couple of seconds 15:58 to 16:00.

Results