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LAUNCESTON SPORTAL

Launceston has great facilities for athletics
and makes good use of them during the Christmas
New Year Carnivals

For the first time ever, the finish of the mens marathon - one of the most prestigious events of the athletics timetable highlighted the Opening Ceremony of the 8th IAAF World Championships in Athletics on the evening of 3
August 2001.

And what an exciting finish it was with Ethiopia's Gezahegne Abera's coming first,Kenya's Simon Biwott on his heels in second position and close behind was Italy's Stefano Baldini.Nick Harrison from Australia performed well coming in 23th with a time of 2 hours 23 minutes 20.

This followed the athletes entry to the stadium,flag raising and the singing of Canada's national anthem in Cree,French and English by young Canadian performers.

A feature of the opening ceremony that was particularly effective was the colourful backdrops that were created for
each region,Oceania's was a blue and contained a representation of a dolphin.

athlete_running.gif

Australians competing at Edmonton to watch out for include sprinter,Matt Skirvington,pole vaulter Tatiana Grigorieva,the 400 m world junior champion Jana Pittman and 17 year old Georgie Clarke,a rising star of the tough middle distance events.

Go Aussie!Oi!Oi!Oi!

Special mention to pole vaulters Viktor Chistiakov from Russia and Dmitri Makov from Belarus who are now Australian Citizens,as is Chistiakov's wife,Tatiana Grigorieva.The 3 have been living in Australa for 5 years.