By Tate Papworth
Brimbank heptathlete Jamieson Battistella will soon don the green and gold once again.
The 18-year-old is on her way to the Oceania Athletics Association Championships in June, following a strong showing at the recently held Australian Athletics Championships.
Battistella claimed a raft of personal best times to take out gold in the heptathlon and high jump.
While she wasn’t expecting big results in the high jump, Battistella said things just fell into place on the day.
“Nationals was really good this year. I did the individual high jump and javelin and then the heptathlon, all in the 20 women’s age group.
“The javelin went OK. It was a solid start for a warm-up while I was up there. But then I went into the high jump not expecting too much because I’m not an individual or specialist high jumper – I’m a heptathlete – but I was lucky enough to be at my peak on the day.
“I managed to jump a two-centimetre personal best, which takes me up to one metre 78 – that got me the gold medal and an Oceania qualifier.”
Battistella carried her form over into her preferred discipline, the heptathlon.
“For the heptathlon, I went in knowing from qualifying that I was ranked about second, I thought I’d be a medal chance if I performed on the day.
“I was lucky enough to get four personal bests out of the seven events on the day and an overall personal best points score, which got me the gold.”
While she’s qualified for two events, Battistella said she’ll continue to train as she normally would.
“I’ll still train solely for the heptathlon because that’s my main event – it’s the one that I really work hard for, but obviously that includes high jump in the seven events so I’ll still be training for that.
“I might chuck in a couple of extra sessions than I’d normally do, we’ll see how the programming goes.”
