The Otago long jumper has started the season in sizzling form.
The 21-year-old set an Otago senior men’s record at the Caledonian Ground at the weekend with a leap of 7.72m.
He eclipsed the previous mark by 1cm.
Veitch pulled off a 7.80m jump on a dodgy ankle in Christchurch last year. But that leap, which was good enough to be included by Athletics New Zealand on its list of longest jumps, did not met the strict criteria to qualify as a record — the run-up at the venue had a slight downwards slope.
At any rate, it should not be too long before those sorts of distances are well behind him.
Veitch is chasing the national record of 8.05m set by Bob Thomas in January 1968.
His coach, Michael Beable, is confident he can get there by the end of the summer, and Veitch is feeling it as well.
"It is nice to post such a good result because I missed such a lot of competition at the start of the year because of injury," Veitch said.
"Things are feeling really good, especially for this time of the year. The way we prepare our training is we are at our best in the early part of the year.
"Putting out good results now is really exciting and gives me confidence there is more to come."
Veitch missed the prime months last season with an ankle complaint. It had been troubling him over the winter but he soldiered on anyway. However, by January the injury had deteriorated and he was forced to take a break.
It was his right ankle, the one that launches him skyward. We did not get to see the best of the young man.
Veitch needs to find another 25cm or so to threaten the record, which seems like an awful lot. But he is still relatively new to long jumping and there is still so much he can get out of his technique.
That is where this business of running on air comes from.
"The thing with long jump is it all happens so fast ... so you are relying on muscle memory quite heavily. You have to drill that in during training.
"And some of the aspects of long jump feel quite unnatural. You’ve just got to do it enough times until you do it without thinking."
Try pacing out 8m at home to see how far it is. It seems inconceivable anyone could leap that far. Veitch does not see what the rest of us see.
"Eight metres seems like a reasonable goal, and if I can jump a little bit more, I’ll get that national record."
His coach is confident as well. Beable (75) has coached more than 40 national representatives and his athletes have collected more than 150 national titles.
"He was on track for more than 8m [last season] ... and he is progressing very well," Beable said.
"He certainly has the capabilities to get over 8m this year and to get the record. His upper goal is to get 8.20m which gives him automatic qualification for the world champs."
The world athletics championships are in Budapest next year.
Reaching the qualifying standard would require a dramatic improvement, but Veitch is hopeful that 8.10m to 8.15m might be enough to convince the national body to send him to Hungary.
Then there is the Olympics in Paris in 2024. That is the big dream and Veitch will be in his prime, so it is certainly on his radar.
More immediately, though, he will be hoping for another good performance at the Yvette Williams Memorial and South Island combined championship at the Caledonian in a fortnight.
