POLE vaulter Alana Boyd will head to the world indoor championships in Istanbul next month in a bid to break the national record after setting a new Australian all-comers mark in Perth on Saturday night.

Boyd cleared 4.66m at the Perth Track Classic to beat the domestic record set by Kym Howe at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in 2006 by one centimetre.

Her next goal is to beat Howe’s national record of 4.72m which was set in 2007 at an indoor meeting in Donetsk, the home town of Ukraine megastar Sergey Bubka.

The world indoor championships begin in Turkey on March 9, the week after the Australian selection trials in Melbourne on March 2 and 3.

“I have never competed indoors before so it will be good fun,” Boyd said yesterday.

“Competing indoors takes the wind and other elements out of it so you can just think about your jump and go when you are ready to go.”

On Saturday Boyd, 27, raised the bar to 4.75m to attempt the record but fell short.

“My training is going really well and for me it is all about replicating in competition all the good training I have been doing,” she said. Continue reading →

France’s 2010 European Athletics Championships pole vault gold medallist Renaud Lavillenie made an impressive comeback after hand surgery in December when he won the 23rd Samsung Pole Vault Stars meeting with 5.82m in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk on Saturday night.

Lavillenie went over his winning height at the first time of asking, as he had done at his earlier heights of 5.52m and 5.72m, at the penultimate European Athletics Indoor Permit Meeting of 2012 before three unsuccessful attempts at 5.92m.

It was the first competition for Lavillenie, who also took the European indoor title last winter, after fracturing his left hand in a training accident on 5 December and he leapt into second place in the 2012 world indoor list.

“It was great to get back into competition. The worst part of the last two months was after my hand had recovered and I could use it again for normal things and I was training but the surgeon had not given me permission to vault. You can imagine that I feel very happy and relieved to have had such a good first competition after the injury,” said Lavillenie. Continue reading →

Hundreds pay tribute to Quiller at memorial service

In Jerry Quiller’s final few weeks of life, he fought through fatigue — just as he coached so many high school, college and professional athletes to do over the years — in order to reach out one more time to those he loved.

Quiller dictated letters to his beloved wife, Sandy, in a final attempt to connect with friends because he was too weak to write them himself. That was the essence of one the great track and field and distance running coaches of all-time.

He found a way to get things done. If a way didn’t exist, he made one up, particularly when the opportunity to help someone or make an impact on a life hung in the balance.

“He always had time for everybody, he really did,” Sandy Quiller said. “… He enjoyed what he did. He loved what he did.”

Quiller coached at Wayne State, Colorado State, Idaho State, Colorado, the United States Military Academy and the U.S. Olympic team in a career that spanned more than 40 years. And his way of living with “Jerry enthusiasm” served as an example to everyone else with whom he came into contact. Continue reading →