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Beatrice Faumuina - Source: Photosport
A decision to stay home and train over the winter paid off for Beatrice Faumuina, who at the weekend passed the women's discus qualifying standard for the 2010 Commonwealth Games.
Competing at the Battle of the Cities meeting at North Shore's Sovereign Stadium on Saturday, the 1997 world champion recorded a throw of 56.09 metres in less than ideal wet weather, just above the performance standard of 56m for the Games.
Faumuina, who won gold medals at the 1998 Kuala Lumpur and the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games, said she was extremely pleased with her first outing of the season.
"In today's conditions I'm pretty rapt with it, it was my first outing in months, so I'm very happy," she said.
Faumuina, 35, a decision was made with her coach Ross Dallow to knuckle down to a solid build up in Auckland.
"We made the decision really early that it was a good idea to stay home and have a really heavy winter and I haven't even backed off that phase yet, as much as I'd like to," she said.
Faumuina is ranked 44th in the world and third in the Commonwealth this year with her New Zealand title throw of 60.03m in Wellington in March.
A total of 100 women athletes have thrown past 56m this year, but only nine in the Commonwealth.
Dani Samuels of Australia, who won the world title in Berlin in August, heads the Commonwealth rankings with 65.44m.
At the last Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in 2006 Faumuina was fourth with a throw of 59.12m and at the Beijing Olympic Games last year she failed to make the final, throwing 57.15m in the preliminary rounds.
In other events, former New Zealand junior 100m champion and record holder Matt Brown came of age in the 400m with a convincing victory.
Brown, 23, clocked a personal best of 47.52 seconds. Ben Potter challenged over the final 50m but could not match Brown's finish and had to settle for second in 48.14sec. James Dolphin was third in 48.50sec.
Meanwhile, Britain-based Anna Frost clocked a women's record time of four hours, 35 minutes, 04 seconds on her way to victory at Friday's Mount Everest Marathon.
Frost finished sixth overall and reduced the women's record by 27 minutes. The previous record was set by Angela Mudge in the last race in 2007.
Frost had spent some time in the region before the race preparing and acclimatising for the gruelling marathon which starts at an altitude of 5184m at Gorak Shep, beside the last huts before Everest Base Camp.
The race finishes at an altitude of 3446m at Namche Bazaar. The Guinness Book of Records lists the marathon as having the highest start line in the world.
