{"id":18947,"date":"2023-11-26T07:10:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-25T20:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sol2023.com.sb\/?p=18947"},"modified":"2023-11-25T20:10:59","modified_gmt":"2023-11-25T09:10:59","slug":"sport-preview-athletics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sol2023.com.sb\/sport-preview-athletics\/","title":{"rendered":"Sport Preview: Athletics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Athletics at Sol2023 will feature more competitors than ever before at a Pacific Games. Photos: Roland Setu and Perelaaroi Saiosi, Samoa 2019 Pacific Games News Service<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Gear up, fasten your seatbelts and get ready for an action-packed week of athletics action at the Sol2023 Pacific Games from Monday 27 November to Saturday 2 December at Honiara\u2019s National Stadium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sol2023, the biggest edition of the Pacific Games to date, will see a massive 400 athletes from 22 countries and territories take part in 29 track and field events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year\u2019s meet promises to be one of the most competitive, with a host of athletes from 13 competing countries fresh from the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest, and also hungry for medals in Honiara.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Para component of athletics will also be the largest ever at a Pacific Games, with 50 athletes set to compete across the five medal events. These are 100m ambulant, 100m seated, shot put ambulant, shot put seated and javelin throw ambulant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the most popular track events \u2013 sprint, middle distance and long distance \u2013 to eye-catching field events, the Sol2023 athletics competition is set to draw thousands to the National Stadium for the week-long festivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Events across men\u2019s and women\u2019s include: 100 metres, 200m, 400m, 800m, 1,500m, 5,000m, 10,000m, 100m hurdles (women), 110m hurdles (men), 400m hurdles, 3,000m steeplechase, 4x100m relays, 4x400m relays, half marathon, high jump, long jump, triple jump, pole vault, shot put, discus throw, javelin throw, hammer throw, decathlon (men) and heptathlon (women).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sprint events promise to attract plenty of attention, given the notable absence of the Pacific\u2019s sprint king and queen \u2013 Fiji\u2019s Banuve Tabakaucoro, who retired just before this Games, and Papua New Guinea\u2019s Toea Wisil, who had a baby in September. Therefore, Sol2023 will see the crowning of a new sprint king and queen in the 100m and 200m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the middle and long-distance events, Solomon Islands\u2019 Sharon Firisua, who also holds the 5000m Pacific Games record, is setting her sights on one final lap \u2013 with the aim of winning the title in front of her home crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The men\u2019s and women\u2019s high jump also promise to be exciting spectacles, with competitors vying to break the event\u2019s 44-year-old Games records for both men and women, set by New Caledonia\u2019s Paul Poaniewa (2.21m) and Tahiti\u2019s Daniele Guyonnet (1.80m).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll athletics events will be eye-catching for the spectators with loud support, as many of these events are commonly followed by people in Honiara,\u201d the Games Organising Committee (GOC)\u2019s Athletics Sports Cluster Manager, Sarah Gale said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She added that it will also be interesting to see how spectators react to events such as pole vault, which will be contested the first time in Solomon Islands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The athletics action begins at 1pm on Monday with the women\u2019s heptathlon 100m hurdles and men\u2019s 400m hurdles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tickets are available for $30 and can be purchased at the National Stadium\u2019s ticket booth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pacific Games News Service<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gear up, fasten your seatbelts and get ready for an action-packed week of athletics action at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":18948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[112,26,18],"tags":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":112,"label":"Athletics"},{"value":26,"label":"All"},{"value":18,"label":"News"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/www.sol2023.com.sb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/Roland-Setu_Mens-10K-finals_IMG_4494-1024x683.jpg",1024,683,true],"author_info":{"display_name":"Joanna Lester","author_link":"https:\/\/www.sol2023.com.sb\/author\/jlester\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":112,"name":"Athletics","slug":"athletics","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":112,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":59,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":112,"category_count":59,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Athletics","category_nicename":"athletics","category_parent":0},{"term_id":26,"name":"All","slug":"all","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":26,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":478,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":26,"category_count":478,"category_description":"","cat_name":"All","category_nicename":"all","category_parent":0},{"term_id":18,"name":"News","slug":"news","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":18,"taxonomy":"category","description":"news","parent":0,"count":464,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":18,"category_count":464,"category_description":"news","cat_name":"News","category_nicename":"news","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sol2023.com.sb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18947"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sol2023.com.sb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sol2023.com.sb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sol2023.com.sb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sol2023.com.sb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sol2023.com.sb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18950,"href":"https:\/\/www.sol2023.com.sb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18947\/revisions\/18950"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sol2023.com.sb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sol2023.com.sb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sol2023.com.sb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sol2023.com.sb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}