Returning Kiwi has global ambitions
It’s been a while, and Canadabased Kiwi middle-distance athlete Alison AndrewsPaul is hoping for a happy homecoming at Auckland’s Night of 5s athletics meet tonight to continue a dramatic improvement over the 800 metres in 2022.
The 24-year-old from the Wairarapa, now based in Burnaby, British Colombia, will make her first appearance on a Kiwi athletics track in 61⁄2 years when she lines up over the two laps at the AUT Millennium in the first national-level meet of the summer.
And after slashing a mammoth 5 seconds off her 800m PB in 2022, she hopes to use her New Zealand domestic return as a springboard for a tilt at the world championships in Budapest in 2023.
She has some work to do yet to get to that level, but after her barnstorming year, no one is placing that in the too-hard basket just yet.
‘‘It’s been a long time since I’ve run in New Zealand. I can’t wait to compete again at home,’’ AndrewsPaul told Athletics NZ ahead of the Auckland meet. ‘‘I’ve never run the Night of 5s before, but it’s always interested me. The timing works well’’
Andrews-Paul last raced on Kiwi soil in June of 2016 at a meet in her hometown of Masterton. She was good enough to wear the Kiwi singlet at that year’s world under-20 championships in Poland, but has spent the intervening years at college in North America, first at Baylor in Texas and then, for her Masters in public health, at Simon Fraser in BC.
The New Zealander failed to improve her 800m PB of 2min 06.32sec, set at the under-20 worlds, through her four years at Baylor as injury, a bout of glandular fever and other factors acted as somewhat of a handbrake.
But after coming under the coaching of Brit Townsend, a 1500m finalist at the 1984 LA Olympic, over the last year at Simon Fraser (where she graduated in August), the Kiwi has finally made her big move, shifting her PB for the two-lap event all the way down to 2:01.43 (set in Azusa in April of this year). That puts her fifth all-time in New Zealand.
‘‘It is still very early in the season for me, so I’m not putting any pressure on myself,’’ she says of her lone outing before heading back to Canada early-January [she now works in elderly health care in Burnaby].
‘‘It will be nice to be part of the New Zealand athletics community and see a few familiar faces. I don’t really know where my speed is at, so I hope to manage the first lap well and really get after it on the second lap.’’
But the big move in ‘22 has definitely fuelled her ambitions, and, after slipping in an indoors event or two, she will return to New Zealand in February for the national championships in Wellington which she hopes will not only give her a gauge of where she sits on the Kiwi scene, but put her on the radar for the worlds in Hungary.
‘‘I grew up in Masterton, so spent a lot of time competing at Newtown Park,’’ said the athlete whose father Wayne Paul was a two-time Commonwealth Games 400m hurdler. ‘‘I won my New Zealand secondary schools title there, so it is a venue that means a lot to me.
‘‘I would love to be a part of the world championship team. I understand that making that step [up] will not be easy, but I know there is more there. I’m focused on running fast.’’
The Night of 5s will feature a number of leading Kiwi athletes, headed by Auckland-based sprint ace Zoe Hobbs who will run the 100m handicap against fellow world champs competitors Georgia Hulls and Rosie Elliott. Hobbs will be giving them all a head-start, so should have her work cut out.
The women’s pole vault should also be worth a watch, even if former Olympic bronze medallist Eliza
McCartney does not line up to launch a highly anticipated comeback from long-term injury.
McCartney is expected to be a game-day decision as she leaves her call as late as possible, though the inclusion of the third and fourthplaced finishers from the Commonwealth Games, in Imogen Ayris and Olivia McTaggart, will ensure plenty of quality regardless.
The women’s 5000m will feature Tokyo Olympian Camille Buscomb in the Waikato athlete’s first track race back since having a baby in June. She has competed in two halfmarathons on the comeback trail and has her sights on a tilt at the 42km event for the Paris Olympics.
Tauranga’s Sam Tanner is expected to light up the men’s 5000m, with the 1500m specialist (sixth in Birmingham) said to be gunning for a quick time after recently upping his weekly mileage from 100 to 130km.