{"id":19411,"date":"2023-11-29T01:14:39","date_gmt":"2023-11-28T14:14:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sol2023.com.sb\/?p=19411"},"modified":"2023-11-29T01:14:41","modified_gmt":"2023-11-28T14:14:41","slug":"papua-new-guineas-karo-iga-takes-gold-in-mens-decathlon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sol2023.com.sb\/papua-new-guineas-karo-iga-takes-gold-in-mens-decathlon\/","title":{"rendered":"Papua New Guinea\u2019s Karo Iga takes gold in men\u2019s decathlon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Iga topped the podium after two gruelling days of competition. Photos: Peter Kofana, Pacific Games News Service<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Papua New Guinea\u2019s Karo Iga won the Sol2023 Pacific Games men\u2019s decathlon on Tuesday at Honiara\u2019s National Stadium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Tuesday\u2019s remaining five of the ten events, Iga came second in the 110m hurdles, fourth in the discus throw, second in pole vault, second in the javelin throw and third in the 1500m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, despite not coming first in any of Tuesday\u2019s events, his points from day one and three second-place finishes on day two saw him complete the decathlon with 6761 points, comfortably ahead of his rivals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tahiti\u2019s Timona Poareu \u2013 who came first in the 100m hurdles, discus and pole vault on Tuesday \u2013 claimed silver with 6076 points while New Zealand\u2019s Stephen Thorpe took home bronze with 5909 points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Max Teuruaa from Cook Islands came fourth with a total of 5127 points, Tonga\u2019s Maleselo Fufofuka came fifth with 4130 points, Solomon Islands\u2019 Alfred Ilisia came sixth with 3954 points and in seventh place was Solomon Islands\u2019 Elton Tata with 3306 points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iga declined the opportunity to comment after his gold medal win, preferring to focus on preparations for his remaining events later this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Silver medallist Poareu told the Pacific Games News Service: \u201cI\u2019m pretty happy because in the last Pacific Games in Samoa I came third so it\u2019s a little bit of improvement in terms of place, but not in terms of points. But it\u2019s one to take second and I\u2019m very happy\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He added: \u201cIn decathlon the difference is that you\u2019re in competition, but you make friends with your competitors because you spend two days together in the same room, do the same ten events, so it creates coalition and good fraternity so it\u2019s very good and very different from all the other events\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bronze medalist Thorpe said: \u201cI\u2019m absolutely stoked, it\u2019s an honor to bring a medal home and to come to my first New Zealand representative event and to secure a medal is just truly awesome\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He added: \u201cIt\u2019s tricky for things to go smoothly when you have got 10 different events to do, so there\u2019s always bound to be hiccups along the way and it\u2019s never going to go according to plan so there was plenty of things that didn\u2019t quite fall into place that I would have loved them to, but it\u2019s all about figuring out how to get around them\u201d.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Lamantha Lano and Junior Sisima, Pacific Games News Service<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Papua New Guinea\u2019s Karo Iga won the Sol2023 Pacific Games men\u2019s decathlon on Tuesday at Honiara\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":19412,"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\/cropped-0V8A3006-1024x681.jpg",1024,681,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\/19411"}],"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=19411"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sol2023.com.sb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19414,"href":"https:\/\/www.sol2023.com.sb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19411\/revisions\/19414"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sol2023.com.sb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sol2023.com.sb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sol2023.com.sb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sol2023.com.sb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}