Mission complete

JOEL RITCHIE

BULLI athlete Ryan Gregson’s dream of a hattrick of Australian under 18 records is reality after he smashed the 1500m mark on Saturday.

Gregson, 17, won the 1500m at the King’s Club Premiership at Homebush 3.43.84, more than 2.5 seconds inside the old mark of 3.46.34.

That record was held by Andrew O’Neil and stood for seven years.

Gregson’s time on Saturday was 3.26 seconds inside his own personal best and is also a new NSW under 20s 1500m record.

Breaking the 1500m record comes after Gregson set new Australian under 18 marks for the 3000m and 5km in November.

Like his record-breaking 5km run the previous week, Saturday’s time was good enough to book Gregson a spot on the plane for the World Junior Athletics Championships in Poland next year.

“Today my intention was to run a time of just under 3.46; to run 3.43 is just incredible,” he said.
“I can’t really believe it.”

“My goal at the start of the season was to break the Australian under 18 records for the 1500m, 3000m and 5000m. “I have done that now. It is a dream come true.”

Ryan is now focussing on the Australian All Schools Championships at Homebush, which start today (Thursday). There, he will attempt to retain his national titles over the 1500m and the 3000m.
Following that Gregson will be travelling down to Melbourne to race in the prestigious Zatopek Open 1500m race against Australia’s best runners.

In previous weeks Gregson broke the Australian under 18 5000m record, slicing nearly five-and-a-half seconds off that mark.

Earlier in the month Craig Mottram’s under 20 3000m record was beaten by a second-and-a-half.

Gregson’s coach Ian Hatfield was pleased with his young charge’s latest achievement.
“Ryan is in outstanding form at the moment,” he said.
“It was sort of our plan to have a crack because at the end of this year he’s in the under 20s so we wanted to get the under 18 3k, the 5k and now the 1500."

The Kembla Joggers athlete, who finished fifth over 1500m in Ostrava, Czech Republic in July, had a personal best of 3:47.10 set before his World Youth Championships experience.

In beating it, he also took the race honours over senior athletes including Jeremy Roff, Russell Dessaix-Chin, James Matthews and Jeff Farrelly.