Blincoe plans Quax attack

DAVID OGILVIE | 18th February 2008

Adrian Blincoe's eyes are now on Dick Quax's long-standing New Zealand national 5000 metres record after becoming Cooks Gardens' 51st four-minute miler on Saturday night.

The American-domiciled Kiwi is chasing the 5000 metres at this year's Olympics and the last stepping-stone to those Games, he hopes, is Quax's 13min 12.87sec recorded in Stockholm in 1977.

First step was Wanganui. Second step is Melbourne this coming weekend, a 5000 metres against a world-class field "just to find out where I'm at" and later just the one big build-up race into Beijing.

That will be in Europe, and as Blincoe cheerfully suggested to a watching Quax at Cooks Gardens on Saturday night, "that's where I'm after your record."

Quax: "I hope he gets it I've had it (NZ record) in one form or other since 1972 and that's long enough."

Blincoe, nursing a sore achilles, did enough on Saturday night to take the Energy Direct Mayoral Mile by four metres from An occasional training mate, Irishman David Campbell with Samoan unknown Aunese Curreen joing the two in the four-minute milers' club.

And it was Campbell and Curreen who made Saturday night a little different. Blincoe (3min 57.65) had "been there" before, these two hadn't.

Campbell's 3.59.19 took around 5sec off his previous best and Curreen (3.59.91) did even better his previous best was around 4.07.

With the wind dropping away around 50 minutes before race time, and pacemakers Simon Fitzpatrick (400m in 58sec, 800m in 1.57) and Justin Stewart (1200m in 2.58) almost doing the suggested job, the four-minutes was always going to be broken.

There had been hopes Stewart would get to the 1200 in around 2.55/2.56 but Campbell took over at the bell, from Blincoe Curreen and Australian late entry Mark Tucker, with the rest of the field outclassed.

Tucker cried off a bit with 200m to go, Curreen had a crack on the outside but then Campbell and Blincoe edged clear, with the Kiwi taking charge with just 100m to go to win by three metres.

Blincoe says the race turned out a bit differently from what he wanted: "I got a pretty shocking start, got pushed to the back, so I had to make my way around runners by that stage David Campbell was in the trail where I had wanted to be.

"But at that point I would rather have been behind him than have him sitting on me because he's an 800-metre runner and I'm a 5km runner.

"It was a bit risky leaving it so late because he's got a great turn of foot, but I held strong and down here in Wanganui I felt that a Kiwi would be able to dig deep."