The twenty-seven-year-old Gold Coast Commonwealth Hammer Champion, New Zealand Julian Ratcliffe surprised her self on Friday (26) at the rescheduled New Zealand Track & Field Championships in Hastings. Ratcliffe defeated her Kiwi rival Lauren Bruce with a mighty Oceania record throw of 73.55m to claim victory. A triple victory in a day, first breaking New Zealand national record, secondly Oceanic record and lastly getting the Olympics qualification which is 73.40m.
“It feels so good to get the Olympic qualification mark off my plate and I can finally focus on building up for Tokyo,” Ratcliffe said.
“It was just awesome. It was like the culmination of 16 years of training with Dave (coach and father) in the crowd. In the last week or so training has been up and down, so to keep it altogether was the big challenge. It was more than I could have hoped”, he concluded.
