Wanganui will have another representative at the London Olympics, which are now only days away; Stuff reports:
Middle distance runner Lucy Van Dalen has been officially confirmed to the New Zealand Olympic Team after bettering the New Zealand qualifying standard for the 1500m two weeks ago in San Diego.
Van Dalen's time of 4min 5.76sec ranks her in the top-30 in the world and Athletics New Zealand believes she has the potential to make the top-16.
New Zealand Olympic Committee secretary general Kereyn Smith said she was delighted to welcome Van Dalen to the team.
"Lucy will be the first woman to represent New Zealand in the 1500m in more than 10 years and we look forward to seeing her in Olympic Stadium in London."
Lucy's rapid improvement over the past 12 months has excited Athletics New Zealand's high performance director Scott Goodman.
"We have been following Lucy's progress closely and are thrilled with her recent performances. It's exciting that she has made this jump up to the highest level so quickly" Goodman said.
Lucy Van Dalen has indeed made a jump to the highest level. The former Wanganui Collegiate School pupil has taken some giant strides this season, and there is no reason why that improvement cannot continue once she gets into the Games environment.
2 comments:
Good to see the selection being confirmed. She has rapidly improved her times over the past month. Good tribute for the highly successful athletics programme at the school because when she started there she had no running background but was winning national titles byt the ties she left
Running background is immaterial.
Most athletes with a running background fall by the wayside in late teens as others start training and surpass those early developers. Often it is referred to as burnout, particularly when they were putting in a lot of training whilst their fellow competitors were not. Very few successful children go on to Olympic, or even Commonwealth Games, glory.
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