Athletics New Zealand High Performance Director Scott Goodman gave a thumbs up for New Zealand athletes progress towards next years Rio Olympic Games after the World Championships in Beijing last week.
I think that we are on track for where we want to be for Rio next year, weve got three in the top eight, which is an improvement from Moscow and certainly an improvement from the London Olympics, and we didnt have Valerie (Adams) here. Im not saying shes a certainty but it gives you four and in terms of our position with HPNZ thats where weve set our KPIs for the programme, said Goodman.
Goodman who lead a team of 14 at the championships said it would have been nice to have picked up a medal.
But with Nick finishing sixth and Tom fourth were in a fair shape, Tom was particularly unlucky with probably a distance (in the shot put) that have would have won him a medal in any other major championship, he said.
He is also pleased with the current depth of top 16.
We have seven top 16 all up which is about where we want to be and weve got a few others just outside the top 16. A couple of athletes didnt go as well as we would have liked, but that happens always in any competition you go to and then we had a couple of breakthroughs."
"Michael Cochrane ran well here, now can he break through and get to the next level hopefully thats the inspiration he needs, he ran a PB and national record."
"Portia Bing did a number of PBs in the heptathlon and has another twelve months. So overall I pretty pleased. Am I ecstatic? No, but Im not unhappy either, said Goodman.
Long term towards Rio, Goodman is optimistic as to the outcome from the team.
We are looking good for Rio when you take into account Valerie is not here and neither are the Robertson twins. Zane has qualified for the 10,000m already, Jake should qualify, both had injury concerns, they could have pushed it to have been at this meet but they have both gone into a rehab programme and were confident theyll be there."
"Young Eliza McCartney in the pole vault hopefully will be with us in Rio and Kim Smith just recently had a baby and she is always in the mix of top 16 or better. And weve got a couple of other younger athletes that could still break-through such as Julia Ratcliffe who didnt quite make it to Beijing."
Mary Davies is also a chance as shes gone under the IAAF standard in the marathon and is just a little bit outside ours, shes been in constant contact with us and could well qualify."
"I think well have a big and fairly strong team for Rio and thats what were building for. I could see us potentially having a team of 20 plus for Rio, added Goodman.
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