Sydney Track Classic Ready for Hot Lap
WAIS national 400m champion Ben Offereins will have the opportunity to run against triple Olympic champion Angelo Taylor at the March 19 Sydney Track Classic.
The American 400m and 400m hurdler will line-up in the one lap dash against one of the strongest fields ever assembled on Australian soil.
Offereins also has something to prove. He returned to the track with a vengeance across the 2010 Australian domestic season, running a personal best 44.86 at the Sydney Track Classic last year and then winning the national title in Perth. But after a later start to his 2011 campaign, Offereins will be looking to gear up his season at the Sydney event for a second consecutive year.
The 400m at the Melbourne Track Classic recently was hot, with teen prodigy Steven Solomon storming home to grab 2010 Commonwealth Games silver medallist Sean Wroe on the line to record the most notable win of his developing career.
In Sydney, the one-lap racing will be even hotter with the addition of American triple Olympic gold medallist Angelo Taylor to the start list at the fourth leg of the Australian Athletics Tour.
The descriptor “jack of all trades” is usually followed by the let-down of “master of none”. It hardly applies to Taylor, one of the best combination 400m and 400m hurdlers of all-time.
Statistically, his 47.25 in the hurdles makes him the ninth-fastest man in history, while his 44.05 over the flat journey has him tenth on the all-time list.
Turning to the ‘honours won’ department, Taylor’s curriculum vitae is equally imposing. Olympic gold medallist in the 400m hurdles in Sydney in 2000 and again in Beijing, where he ran his personal best of 47.25. He is one of only three men – the legendary Edwin Moses (USA) and Glenn Davis (USA) the others – to have won the event twice.
Taylor also ran the second leg on the USA 4x400m relay which took the gold medal in Beijing in Olympic record time. Australia finished sixth in that final with Wroe, one of Taylor’s confirmed opponents for Sydney, running the first leg.
Taylor is also a bronze medallist in the individual 400m from the 2007 Osaka world championships, so he represents a formidable obstacle for Australia’s top men.
The 32-year-old American hails from Decatur, Georgia and attended Georgia Tech University.
He must have a soft spot for Sydney – he took the bronze medal in the 400m hurdles at the 1996 world junior championships and then won his first Olympic title there four years later at just 21 years of age.
Also set to run the 200m, Taylor will ensure Australia’s best short sprinters have their work cut out for them too.
Listed at 15th on the 2010 IAAF Top Lists for the event, Taylor clocked a season best 20.23 (w: +0.6) at the Rieti (ITA) instalment of the IAAF World Challenge last year. Improving his personal best in the process, Taylor’s performance confirmed his ranking within the top 20 internationally for three events (200m, 400m, 400m hurdles) in the same year.
Solomon, who does not turn 18 until May 16, has been one of the revelations of the Australian Athletics Tour. He won the under 18 title at the Australian All School Championships in Melbourne last December in 46.44, a then personal best, until his upset win in 46.12 in Melbourne.
Solomon continues a long list of NSW one-lappers to show outstanding potential at a young age. Foremost among them would be Darren Clark, who ran 45.05 to win the English Amateur Athletics Association’s championship just over a month short of his 18th birthday in 1983, and led the Olympic final into the straight less than a year later in Los Angeles.
Miles Murphy won the world junior championship in 1986, Steve Perry was a silver medallist two years later and Paul Greene went to a world indoor and world outdoor championships at the age of 19.
Solomon may have snuck under Wroe’s guard in Melbourne. The Commonwealth silver medallist looked to have the race won and may have been paying more attention to national champion Ben Offereins in the middle of the field than to Solomon flying home on the inside. If so, he has been warned.
A five-stop national tour, the 2011 Australian Athletics Tour boasts four divisions (sprints/hurdles, distance, throws, distance) with male and female athletes in different events pitted against each other in the race for the largest prize purse in Australian athletics history.
The Sydney Track Classic is the last leg of the tour before the Tour Final in Perth, with domestic athletes on the hunt for strong point scores lining up alongside a bounty of international talent that includes 800m world record holder David Rudisha (KEN), America’s number one discus thrower in Becky Briesch and Olympic 1500m champion Asbel Kiprop (KEN).
– Athletics Australia