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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol 35 no. 10. 24 May 1972

Harriers

Harriers

Competition started for the Harrier club on 22nd with the club's own novice cup race, tradition ensures a considerable amount of interest in the event as the real strength of the club for the year can be gauged from the "novice".

This year was no exception and a large field of fifty runners hopped and jumped in various degrees of nervous tension waiting for the start, Speculation as to the likely winner became more rife with the withdrawal of Ian Stockwell, due to an injury.

The start was a jostling rush of flagellating limbs. However, from out of the confusion hurtled national 400 metre champion, Phil Kear, apparently under the illusion that the race was just up a short hill, then down the other side. Actually generalisation of the course could sound like that He claimed after the race that he had been misled.

The hill sorted out the field a bit and Eric Cairns set out to win the race from the front. Actually relativity comes into it because the winner always wins from the front indeed he led the field a merry chase down the long downhill section by a flying fisher, closely attended by speedy George Seconi.

The short uphill stretch to the Seatoun tunnel was perhaps the crucial part of the race. Levels of fitness were ironed out by the gradient. Ian Hunt made the most of this imposte and caught the leaders up by the tunnel in the battle along the Seatoun waterfront Hunt and Fisher edged ahead and sustaining a long sprint to the finish. Hunt won by four seconds from Martin Fisher. The actual winner of the novice cup was Martin Fisher Ian Hunt being ineligible. This was a fine effort by the new dub captain which somewhat confounded the pundits who seemed to favour Len Watson or Frank Nolan for the title.

The second major competition for the year came with the Shaw Baton relays at Johnsonville. University had five senior teams, a Junior team, and an abortive womens team in this interclub event.

Martin Fisher gave the A team a really good start with some fine aggressive running. He really impressed as he attacked the first hill with Che Cuevera style contempt for the opposition. A truly fearsome figure.

The next three laps saw some precision running from the Varsity runners. Cairns. Hunt and Seconi. Each ran 6m.01 sec. to leave the team firmly entrenched in sixth place. Len Watson disappointed with his effort in the fifth lap. However, he held the team placing, which Ian Stockwell also maintained to give Varsity a creditable sixth place Mention must be made of B Team runner, Ian Tracy, who ran 5m.50sec which was faster than most of the 'A' team, another good performance was registered by D team runner Richard Owens, who upheld claims that he could have been in a higher team.

With a number of prominent runners unavailable for the Shaw Baton Teams it is apparent that the club has greater depth than usual.