Aussie powers to win in mile

Australian Jeff Risely produced a magnificent run to head off compatriot Collis Birmingham and win the feature mile race at last night's international track meet at QE II Stadium in Christchurch.

Led superbly by pacemaker Rob Myers, the Australians took the bell 20 metres ahead of the rest of the field.

After going stride for stride up the home straight, it was Risely who prevailed in a time of 3:50.63.

With Olympic bronze medallist Nick Willis not running because of a leg injury, the mile field was further depleted when favourite Andrew Baddely cried off after tweaking a calf muscle in the warmups. That left Risely as arguably the man to beat and he did not disappoint. "I came here in the frame of mind that I was going to come here and get on the pace and just go as hard as I can," said Risely.

"There was some really good pace-making; I felt good in the last lap. If we had Badders (Baddely) and Nick out there with us we might have gone even faster.

"We were a bit worried about the wind when we got here on Wednesday. It was raining, 10 degrees and we were all rugged up, but it turned out really nice and we had a good performance from the New Zealand 100 metre runner."

The athlete Risely was referring to was Christchurch teenager David Ambler, who won the men's 100 metres at a canter, in the process breaking the stadium record, 10.4 seconds, set by Don Quarrie at the 1974 Commonwealth Games.

"I was stoked. I just wanted to get away from them at the start, with Chris Donaldson and James Dolphin being really top starters," Ambler said after his time of 10.35 seconds.

"My goal was to take it out strong, finish well and it worked out. It's very pleasing.

"There was a bit of pressure leading up to it because I'd been running the best in New Zealand. I was really gunning for that record leading up to the race and conditions suited it."

Ambler was not the only runner to break a long-standing record, with Monique Williams breaking Kim Robertson's 200-metre New Zealand resident's record, in a time of 23.26 seconds.

- © Fairfax NZ News