Cowie Ready to Spark in Moncton
The all-new Australian Spark will this week step onto the world stage to launch its seven-day all-Aussie assault on the 13th IAAF world junior championships in Moncton, Canada, where the world’s top emerging track and field athletes will vie for 132 medals across 44 events.
Following tomorrow morning’s opening ceremony at Stade Moncton (AEST), the 36-strong Australian team will open its campaign on Tuesday evening (AEST) looking to test its mettle against athletes from 169 IAAF member federations.
Leading the charge for WAIS will be shot put athlete Matt Cowie – who is in action on day three of competition. Cowie is under the tutelage of WAIS coach Grant Ward and trains alongside WAIS national javelin champion and Commonwealth Games representative Kim Mickle.
Open to athletes born 1991 to 1994, the world junior championships have launched the careers of a raft of world champions including 100m and 200m world record-holder and dual world champion Usain Bolt (100m/200m, JAM).
The inaugural Australian Spark, named following the inception of the Australian Flame at last year’s IAAF world championships in Berlin (GER), is headed up by six members of the 2009 IAAF world youth championships team including high jump silver medallist Amy Pejkovic, who features in the action on day five.
Pejkovic will be joined in Moncton by world youth teammates Mitchell Tysoe (day five – 110m hurdles), Dane Bird-Smith (day five – 10,000m walk), Paige Hooper (day three – 10,000m walk), Brooke Stratton (day four – long jump) and Taryn Gollshewsky (day two – discus throw).
At just 19 years of age Victoria’s Kim Mulhall (day two – shot put, discus throw) will line up for her third national team, following appearances at the 2007 world youth championships in Ostrava (CZE) and the 2008 world junior championships in Bydgoszcz (POL).
Commonwealth Youth Games gold medallists Sam Baines (day five – 110m hurdles) and Julian Wruck (day five – discus throw) and fellow 2008 Commonwealth Youth representatives Todd Wakefield (day two – 1500m), Matt Cowie (day three – shot put) and Amanda Bartrim (day four – pole vault) will also make their return to the world stage.
In what is set to be a busy few months for 19-year-old Wruck, the Texan-based discus specialist will make his senior international debut at the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, India, in October.
Adding further weight to the Spark’s international resume, three of the four walkers set to take to the start line – Bird-Smith, Rhydian Cowley (day five – 10,000m walk) and Regan Lamble (day three – 10,000m walk) – represented Australia at the IAAF World Race Walking Cup in Chihuahua, Mexico, in May.
In a strong showing of the current depth of junior track talent in Australia, the Spark will field squads in all four relay events (girls’ and boys’ 4x100m, girls’ and boys’ 4x400m).
Six athletes – Lamble, Mulhall, Stratton, Baines, Brett Robinson (day two – 1500m) and Steve Solomon (day six – 4x400m relay) – will co-captain the team.
Australia has a proud history of success at the world junior championships, claiming 11 gold medals in the meet’s 25-year history. Two of the nation’s former world junior title-holders, Jana Pittman-Rawlinson (400m/400m hurdles, 2000) and Dani Samuels (discus throw, 2006), have gone on to become senior world champions, Pittman-Rawlinson claiming the 400m hurdles crown in 2003 and 2007 and Samuels taking out the discus throw in 2009.
– Athletics Australia