ASICS ambassador and World indoor champion Fabrice Lapierre jumped a massive 8.78m (w:3.1) to book his spot on the Commonwealth Games team heading to Delhi in October.
Lapierre was joined by fellow ASICS ambassadors Dani Samuels (discus), John Steffensen (400m & 4x400m relay), Melissa Breen (100m), Tamsyn Lewis (4x400m relay), Luke Adams (20KM Walk), Sean Wroe (400m Relay) in the team following some exciting competition at the selection trials in Perth last weekend.
Lapierre surprised even himself with the monster jump, albeit with an illegal tail wind. He didn’t feel he was in the best possible shape leading into the final and his first five jumps were not spectacular. However, a big leap of 8.33m from the eventual runner up spurred him into action.
“I wasn’t thinking about how far I was going to jump, I was just thinking I knew I had to jump far. I just felt like I had a big jump in me, it felt natural. It felt like I was flying I guess, it just felt so easy, it felt like I was floating though the air which was kind of cool.”
Fellow ambassador and world champion Dani Samuels took out her fifth consecutive national discus with a throw of 63.61m.
My goal this year is to be consistent at 63m and 64m so I’m gradually building up to every competition hopefully throwing over 63m and I’ve done that today and I’ve done that quite a bit throughout the domestic season and got a PB so I’m really happy,” Samuels said.
Coming into the meet with limited preparations due to a back operation last December, John Steffensen surprised himself and everyone else with his second place in a B qualifying time of 45.72 in the 400m final.
While John wrapped up an individual spot as well as the right to defend his Commonwealth Games title, fellow 400m ASICS ambassador Sean Wroe took the race out too hard in the final and ended up 4th in the race.
The result meant that Sean missed out on an individual spot and will go to Dehli as a member of the 4x400m relay team.
Sixty-nine athletes have been named in the team for Delhi so far and ASICS would like to wish all members of the team the very best in their quest for medal honours in India.