Will the Lovelock Mile record fall?
Race honors 1936 Olympic 1500m champion and local legend Jack Lovelock; winner to receive $600 prize money with an extra $400 for a sub-4 minute Mile
From The Timaru Herald
No Lovelock Mile competitor has yet managed to beat the best Mile time of the man commemorated in the annual race, but this year's crop of entrants will have the chance at Timaru's Aorangi Stadium on Saturday.
Since the Lovelock Classic meeting kicked off a decade ago, Wellington's Hamish Carson has come closest to the 1933 world Mile record of 4 minutes, 7.6 seconds set by South Canterbury legend Jack Lovelock, completing the one Mile (1609 meter) race in 4:10.08.
Lovelock attended Timaru Boys' High School and went on to compete in the Los Angeles Olympics in 1932, where he finished seventh in the 1500m, and most notably in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, where he won gold in the same event, the first New Zealander to win an Olympic athletics title. Between those appearances, he set his world Mile mark, and career best time over the distance, at Princeton in 1933.
Classic local organizing committee secretary Helen Mackle said 86 competitors had signed up for Saturday's meet, "a wee bit down" on 2016.
"Last year was a particularly good year, last year we had 130, but it was outstanding last year."
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