Earlier today an array of Australia’s most promising Junior athletes toed the start line at the Australian Junior Sprint Championships in Port Adelaide to determine the third and final slots for the men and women at the upcoming World Junior Championships.
The first two male and female slots were decided at the Oceania Junior Championships in February.
Bradley Course won the Junior men’s race in Taupo. Course has been in sterling form this season and followed it up with a silver medal at the Oceania U23 Sprint Championships.
Thomas Feldmann won silver in Taupo which put him on the plane to Hamburg. Meanwhile Jack Crome won bronze and so still needed to book his ticket.
Each of the men would be looking to imitate the efforts of their compatriot Toby Powers (pictured above) who won a silver medal at last year’s World Junior Championships in Montreal.
On the women’s side, Rhianna Hepburn won silver in Taupo and was the best Australian finisher at the Oceania Junior Championships. As a result, she had already earned her place at worlds. Gabriella Jackson was the bronze medallist and she too had earned her place on the team.
In Adelaide, the women kicked off the action.
Alexandra Field led the way with a 9:20 split in the swim. Hepburn was close behind in 9:22. Once onto the bike, the duo of Hepburn and Field were quick to drop Mia Marks and Isla Watson who had stayed with them in the water.
With Hepburn ripping a split of 35:08 and Field logging 35:12, only two other women, Aspen Anderson and Emma Olson-Keating, were able to ride under 36 minutes. When the lead pair arrived in T2, they did so with a substantial lead.
Hepburn ran away from Field to storm to the win by 1 minute 20 seconds. Field battled to hold on to 2nd but was passed by both Anderson and Olson-Keating.
With Hepburn already on the World Junior team, the final slot would come down to the duel between Olson-Keating and Anderson. Olson-Keating raced at the 2022 World Junior Championships so had the experience to fall back upon. At the same time, Anderson represented Australia at the World Cross Country Championships in February. Having only been born in 2006, Anderson ended up in 35th place in the U20 race.
In the end, Anderson’s class on the run shone through as she produced a split of 19:18, only 11 seconds slower than Hepburn, to take 2nd.
As the best finisher not already qualified, Anderson will likely have booked her ticket to Hamburg in July.
In the men’s race, Jack Crome set about dominating proceedings from the start.
With a split of 8:40, Crome led the way in the swim. He attacked out of T1 and at the end of the first bike lap had a lead of 20 seconds. That went up to 28 seconds after the second lap. By the end of the bike, though, his advantage had been sliced back to 11 seconds.
The question now was whether he could summon the run to take the win after expending so much energy.
By the end of the first run lap, Mitchell Blackbourn had caught Crome. Crome tried to keep pace but in the end, Blackbourn surged ahead unperturbed and ultimately crossed the line 40 seconds clear.
Crome came home in 2nd while Tristan Price rounded out the podium.
There have been a lot promising performances from European and North American Juniors of late. In Adelaide, though, the Australian Juniors served a timely reminder that they will be a real threat when worlds roll around.
