Blake blazes a trial with new 800m record
Competing against the top athletics schools from seven provinces, she broke the 14-year-old meeting record.
Lee-Anne Blake, a grade 8 pupil at Kingsway High School, achieved another outstanding performance at the weekend, when she won the 800m for girls U14 in a new record time of 2.17.95 at the annual national inter-schools meeting in Bloemfontein.
Competing against the top athletics schools from seven provinces, she broke the 14-year-old meeting record with this performance, which was also indicated by the organisers, the University of the Free State, as the top track performance on the day among all age groups and both genders.
She duly won the award for best sub-youth female track athlete.
For good measure she came back later in the day to win the girls U14 400m in an outstanding time of 59.52 seconds, achieving the seventh best overall track performance of all competitors in all categories on the day.
Lee-Anne is actually still in the under 13 age group.
Hlengiwe Zuma, also of Kingsway High School, achieved a second place in the girls U16 1,500m, and Lisha van Onselen a second place in both the girls U17 800m and 1,500m.
These three athletes, who are members of and train at Amanzimtoti Athletics Club, proved themselves with outstanding performances against tough national opposition.
“I had planned and hoped to break the record, but at this weekend’s KZN champs at Kings Park and not at the inter-schools,” said Lee-Anne. “I was using the inter-schools as training for KZN champs.
The competition will be tough this weekend, but I’m aiming for another first place as I have been training hard for the past few weeks.”
Lee-Anne helped her school team win the Sugar Relay at the inter-schools meet at Kings Park two weeks ago, when she gave her team an unassailable lead by blitzing the 800m. The Sugar Relay consists of 1x800m, 1x400m, 2x200m and 4x100m and a team consists of eight runners.
