In what was a sensational end to the Japanese circuit MattyB DEPT. athletes has 2 victories, 2 Olympic and World championship B qualifiers and an A Qualifier for the World Championships at the Kawasaki World Challenge Grand Prix.

Kawasaki Race Footage

The meet started with Lauren Boden taking out the Women’s 400m Hurdles in a season best time of 55.86. The race was never in doubt as she set up a huge lead down the back straight and remained strong right to the line running her 5th ‘B’ Qualifier and moving a step closer to the A standard of 55.40.

Next up on the track was Melissa Breen who anchored the Australian Women’s 4 x 100m relay. After narrowly missing the qualifying standard of 44.00 on two occasions during the domestic season the girls were on a mission in Japan.

Melissa chased the Japanese team down the home straight as they recorded a time of 43.69. It was an agonizing few minutes as they waited for the scoreboard to post the results but when it did there was a high level of excitement amongst the team.

Brendan Cole was the next MattyB DEPT. athlete to step onto the track. Running from lane 2 Cole set up the race using great poise and control. Coming into the final straight Cole was in 4th position but then unleashed an amazing last 100m to surge away and record a winning margin of over half a second recording a time of 49.60. This time is a B Standard for World Champs and Olympic Champs and is only 0.1 of the Olympic A Standard.

Melissa Breen then completed a wonderful day of racing to finish 3rd in the Women’s 100m in a time of 11.56 into a 0.4 headwind. Melissa again showed much greater maturity in this race to finish off strongly picking up several places in the final 20m.