New Zealands medal tally for the World University Games now stands at five after outstanding efforts by 5000m runner Camille Buscomb, who won silver, and hammer thrower Julia Ratcliffe who won bronze.
The two Kiwis won their medals in quick succession with Ratcliffe taking a moment to cheer on her teammate from the inner track before her final throw.
Ratcliffe, who was the New Zealand flag bearer at the opening ceremony, claimed the bronze medal with a throw of 67.54m.
Gold medal winner Hanna Skydan of Azerbaijan threw 70.67m to win gold and Joanna Fiodorow of Poland was second with a distance of 69.69m.
As Ratcliffe, the New Zealand record holder, was finishing her competition Buscomb, a Waikato University student, who was racing on her 25th birthday, was powering her way around the track in the 5000m final.
While she couldnt catch Kristina Maki of Czech Republic (16:03.29), Buscomb chased down Daria Maslova to Kyrgyzstan (16:04.09) to claim silver in a time of 16:03.72.
``Its amazing to come here and medal. Im so happy, Buscomb said.
Maki widened the gap to take the lead with around 300m to go and Buscomb couldnt catch her. But she hunted down the next in line, to take the silver and relegate Maslova to third.Ratcliffe competed in heavy rain and was very happy to come away with a bronze medal.`
`I didnt throw as well as I wanted to, nowhere close, but the conditions were awful. I did what I needed to do to get into the medals, so you cant complain about that.
The New Zealand team has now won five medals at the World University Games in the South Korean city of Gwangju. Angie Petty won gold in the 800m, Eliza McCartney won silver in the womens pole vault and rower Toby Cunliffe-Steel won silver in the mens lightweight single scull.Sixty-six athletes have been competing for New Zealand at the World University Games and 30 of them have been competing in track and field.
In other results at the athletics stadium on Saturday, Veronica Torr, a student at Massey University, finished sixth in the heptathlon. Torr had been in second place after the fifth event in the heptathlon, the long jump, but slipped to fifth after a below-par javelin and was pushed back to sixth after the final event, the 800m, with a score of 5665 points.
Te Rina Keenan from Auckland finished seventh in the shot put final with a best of 15.39, while Torie Owers, based in California finished up in ninth place with a throw of 14.78.Melbourne-based Nneka Okpala made the top eight in the triple jump final with a jump of 13.15, good enough for eighth place. Marshall Hall placed ninth in the discus final with a best of 54.59, while Brad Mathas ran 1:48.77, good enough for fourth in his 800m semi-final but the time was not good enough to make the final and the Cantabrian finished the Games ranked tenth in his event.
Matthew Wyatt's long jump of 7.31 was not good enough to progress past the qualifying round and left him ranked 17th in the event, while Nick Southgate was forced to withdraw from the pole vault final with a calf injury sustained during his warm-up.The relay teams had mixed fortunes in the semi-finals. The women's 4x100m placed second in their race in a good 45.64 after a number of more fancied teams failed to complete the race, allowing the Kiwis to gain automatic qualification and go into the final ranked sixth.The men's 4x400 team ran a solid 3:11.49 that saw them ranked 10th and outside of the eight for a final.Pouring rain made for difficult conditions with the throws circle described as being like an ice-skating rink at times. In the mens pole vault, athletes created a huge splash as they landed on the mat.
Swimming - Competition ends
Eight days of competition for the New Zealand swimmers at the World University Games has wrapped up with the 10km open water swim for Kane Radford and Phillip Ryan.Radford finished eighth in a time of 1:56:29.9 while Ryan was 10th in 1:56:39.1.A disappointed Radford says it wasnt the result he was looking for.
``I just found it was a very difficult race, there were a lot of things thrown in there, a lot of new guys on the course that havent really swum open water yet who dont so much know how to swim with other guys around them, so it was a very interesting race. Im definitely a little bit disappointed with the end result.
Radford said the conditions had been relatively flat for an open water swim.
``The course itself, you couldnt ask for a better course. The water temperature was up around 26 (degC), 27 (degC) which is really hot for me first time Ive had to swim in water that hot.Radford injured a finger during the race. ``The pace all of a sudden slows down and youre already through your strike, my finger just went into the back of someone, unfortunately I jammed up.``It happens, and you kind of forget about it through the race, its more when you stop. Its not something that affected the end result thats for sure.Radford flies out from South Korea tomorrow to a training camp in Spain for a week and then flies to Russia for the FINA World Championships in Kazan, which is the first Olympic qualifying event for the open water swimmers.At the close of the swimming competition, New Zealand swimmers made four finals achieved by Laura Quilter, Daniel Hunter and the womens 4x200m freestyle and 4x100m medley relays.
Table Tennis
Hweiching Lim played well but has been pushed out of the elimination rounds in the womens singles having gone down to Russian Mariia Dolgikh 4-0. The scores for the individual games were 11-4, 11-6, 11-3 and 11-3.Jonathan Wang plays Andrew Gambina of Malta in the mens singles tomorrow.
In action on Sunday 12 July8:10 - Half marathon (Aaron Pulford)10:00 - Table tennis singles knock-out phase (Jonathan Wang)17:00 - High Jump final (Liz Lamb & Keeley O'Hagan)18:15 - Javelin Throw final (Tori Peeters)18:40 - 4100m womens (running) relay final.
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