Lachlan Kennedy wins the 200m ahead of Gout Gout in Melbourne (© Maurie Plant Meet)
Headline stars went down on an unseasonally cool Melbourne autumn night in the first World Athletics Continental Tour Gold meeting of 2025 on Saturday (29).
Bayapo Ndori held off his Botswana teammate Letsile Tebogo, the Olympic 200m champion, in the 400m, while world indoor 60m silver medallist Lachlan Kennedy pipped Gout Gout in the 200m. Lianna Davidson, a Queenslander fresh back from Atlanta, Georgia, upset world bronze medallist Mackenzie Little in the javelin.
None of these were exactly shocks. Ndori came in with a season’s best of 44.59 run earlier in the month in Pretoria, almost a full second faster than Tebogo in the same meeting. Gout was running against senior opposition for the first time this season and his 20.30 – behind Kennedy’s 20.26 – was none too shabby. Little threw a season’s best of 59.66m as she juggles full-time medical work with her build-up towards the World Championships later in the year.
Matt Denny held up the form book with a win in the discus with a best distance of 68.17m as he prepares to leave for competition in the throwing nirvana that is Oklahoma at this time of year. He will hope that the weather is truer to established seasonal patterns than it was in Melbourne. Eleanor Patterson, well rugged up against the cold, won the high jump with 1.94m before bowing out at the 1.97m height which she cleared to take the silver medal at the World Indoor Championships in Nanjing last weekend.
And in the John Landy 1500m, one of the night’s premier events, Cameron Myers built on the indoor form which brought him to U20 world records with victory over national champion Adam Spencer in 3:34.98.
The Maurie Plant Meet was watched by an enthusiastic crowd estimated at 10,000. All tickets were sold for what was the best attended athletics meeting in Melbourne since the three-meeting Nitro series featuring Usain Bolt eight years ago.
In the 400m, Tebogo never got on terms with Ndori until it was too late. He was well behind off the final bend and his storming finish still left him a metre short at the line. Ndori ran 45.12 and Tebogo 45.26, with Leungo Scotch completing a Botswana 1-2-3 in 45.60.
It was a similar storyline in the men’s 200m. Gout was slower out of the blocks than Kennedy and although not looking as free-flowing as in the 200m races he contested in Queensland at the end of last year and at the start of 2025, Gout still took ground out of Kennedy all the way to the finish, falling just short – 20.26 to 20.30.
Davidson is attending the University of Georgia. Last year she finished second in the national collegiate championships and just last weekend in Atlanta she produced a personal best 63.79m throw. She led the javelin contest throughout with a 58.35m first round effort before her wining 61.06m in the next round. At that stage Little was mired in the 55-56-metre range. She produced her 59.66m in the final round. Japan’s Momone Ueda finished third.
Up against a strong field led by Britain’s Lawrence Okoye and New Zealand’s Connor Bell, Denny restored a sense of normality with a 68.17m meeting record in the second round. There will have been some extra satisfaction, perhaps, as the previous record-holder was Bell who has made a habit of upstaging Denny on his home turf. Okoye, who threw 67.10m in warmer conditions in Queensland recently, was second with a best of 64.16m and Bell reached 62.14m for third.
The men’s and women’s 1500m races both boasted strong fields and delivered excellent races. Myers, Oliver Hoare and Spencer were up with the pacemaker through the first 800m in the men’s race, at which point Myers tapped him on the shoulder as if to say: “I’ll take it from here.” He built a lead which stretched out towards 10 metres at stages before Spencer started to cut into it around the final bend. But he had left his run too late and Myers edged further ahead in the last 50 metres to win, 3:34.98 to 3:35.52.
Jude Thomas and Hoare flashed across the line together. Both were given the same time of 3:36.48. The photo finish could not separate the pair, so it was a dead heat for third.
Less than a second covered the first four in the women’s race but there was no doubt about the winner, Claudia Hollingsworth producing a well-judged run to defeat Sarah Billings, 4:05.97 to 4:06.37. Linden Hall pipped Abbey Caldwell for third, 4:06.89 to 4:06.91.
World indoor 3000 bronze medallist Ky Robinson won the 5000m in 13:13.17 from Seth Robinson who slashed his previous best by eight seconds in running 13:14.57.
Completing the distance component of the meeting, Ethiopia’s Fantaye Belayneh outsprinted Georgia Griffiths and Senayet Getachew to win the 3000m in 8:34.30.
A high-class women’s hammer throw was won by USA’s Jillian Shippee with a meeting record of 71.26m from Rose Loga of France with 69.05m, Lauren Bruce of New Zealand with 68.87m and Stephanie Ratcliffe of Australia with 68.10m.
In the pre-meeting events, Kennedy got in the first leg of a sprint double with a win in the 100m in 10.17 (-1.1m/s).
Len Johnson for World Athletics
