Marschall Collects Another World Championships Qualifying Mark

Kurtis Marschall has kept the ball rolling on an impressive start to the 2019 domestic season for WA’s elite pole vaulters with the Commonwealth champion achieving another Worlds qualifier at a local meet in Perth.

Having already reached and passed the IAAF qualifying standard of 5.71m in international competition at the back end of 2018, Marschall again eclipsed that mark with a jump of 5.81m at the WA Athletics Stadium last Saturday.

Marshall cleared with plenty of room to spare, but he opted to move to a bigger pole for his next look at 5.88m which would have seen him assume the early world lead globally and break his own personal best (5.86m) had he cleared.

There will be plenty of time for that later in the year however and in the meantime, he and training partner Liz Parnova are preparing for a short European tour that will see both athletes gaining some international competition time ahead of April’s national titles, and ultimately this year’s World Championships in October.

The pair can both cement their selection for Worlds at the Australian Athletics Championships in Sydney and they will be joined in the selection hunt by fellow WA vaulters Declan Carruthers, Angus Armstrong and Nina Kennedy.

Marschall’s form follows on from a recent personal best and World Championships qualifier for Parnova, who herself shadowed a personal best achieved by Carruthers (5.60m) in Perth in early January.

Collectively the group has been in excellent form and the next test will be to transfer that momentum outside of Perth.

There were also Strive Competition wins in Perth for Alanah Yukich in the women’s 400m hurdles and Ian Dewhurst in the men’s, whilst Cruz Hogan and Lara Ilievski took out the men’s and women’s javelin throws respectively.