Oceania Championships and Grand Prix

Over 250 world class athletes from 19 nations took part in the 2008 Oceania Championships and Oceania Grand Prix held from June 23 to 28 on Saipan.

The sheer number of participants alone, which included a smattering of Olympians, is enough to make the area championships one of the Top 10 sports stories of the year.

But if you add that no less than Oceania Athletics Association executive director Yvonne Mullins said that the 2008 Saipan Oceania Championships was the best she was ever been part of then, hands down, it should be Saipan Tribune’s Sports Story of the Year.

“This I think is better than anything I’ve ever been to before. It’s been the best Oceania Championships that I’ve ever had the opportunity to attend,” Mullins said the evening before hopping into a plane bound for her native Australia.

“The competition has been great. The LOC (local organizing committee) has just been absolutely out of this world. The local organizing committee is better than any local organizing committee I’ve ever had the opportunity to work with. They’ve been fabulous,” she added. “If you’re going to run a successful Oceania Championships you should need a lot of things to go right and what happened here this week is everything went right. In a scale of 1-10, I would give the 2008 Oceania Championships a 9.9,” she added.

Among the top men performers of the area championships were New Caledonian high jumper Frederic Erin, Papua New Guinea’s hurdler Mowen Boino, Fijian runner Isoa Me, then Olympic-bound Aunese Curreen of Samoa.

Papua New Guinea’s quartet of amazing runners—Mae Koime, Toea Wisil, Salome Dell, and Betty Burua—also didn’t disappoint and led the women performers in the 2008 Oceania Championships.

At the end of almost a week of non-stop action at the Oleai Track and Field, New Zealand topped the medal standings with 17 gold medals to go along with its 10 silver and six bronze.

Fiji leapfrogged past proverbial runner-up Australia in the medal standings, winding up with 11 gold medals as well eight silver and three bronze.

Samoa was another country that finished ahead of powerhouse Australia, finishing with 10 gold, three silver, and a bronze.

Australia, meanwhile, closed out the area championships with nine gold, 11 silver, and five bronze medals to its name.

Papua New Guinea came away with nine gold, six silver, and five bronze medals, while New Caledonia finished with a haul of four gold, three silver, and two bronze medals.

Making up the rest of the medal standings were Guam (4 gold, 6 silver, and 13 bronze), Tahiti (4-6-5), Cook Islands (2-3-5), Tonga (1-7-5), CNMI (1-6-9), Solomon Islands (1-2-2), Kiribati (1-1-2), Norfolk Islands (1-0-1), Palau (one silver), Vanuatu (two bronze), and Nauru (one bronze).

Incidentally, the lack of resources and access to first-rate facilities didn’t deter the hosts from making waves in the area championships as Jacque Wonenberg won the islands’ lone gold medal in the women’s pentathlon.

Also contributing in the Commonwealth’s 16-medal haul were the silver medals of Trevor Ogumoro in octathlon and Ketson “Jack” Kabiriel in the steeplechase.