Shay Veitch PHOTO: LINDA ROBERTSON
The Otago athlete was in blistering form at the Potts Classic in Hastings to win the men's 100m with a personal best 10.34sec at the weekend.
No-one came close to Veitch at the halfway point as he laid down the sixth-fastest time in New Zealand history to stand on top of the podium.
Lex Revell-Lewis (Waitakere) was runner-up with 10.49sec and Hayato Yoneto (Aspiring) finished third in 10.56sec.
But the day belonged to Veitch, who massively lowered his previous personal best of 10.64sec.
"Last season wasn't too good," Veitch said.
"I've had a fantastic winter and it's been nice just to come out and not be in the conversation initially, but show up that I'm still in the game."
All that hard work through the cold winter training blocks paid off for Veitch, who was quietly optimistic he had something special brewing.
"All the training times suggested probably about 10.2sec.
"I didn't really say that to many people, I didn't think people were going to believe me.
"The only people that thought it were probably me and my coach. It was fun to come out and prove that I am in good shape."
Veitch (Ariki) had a relatively quiet 2024 season, but the long jump and spring specialist had a good reason.
He was knocked off his motorbike by a car in Dunedin last February, and while he was lucky not to break anything, his jumping knee was swollen for about three months.
While it was a niggly setback, Veitch felt he had two years of good progress coming to fruition.
"It was kind of nice just to have a bad season, and come out again, and actually prove that I haven't been slacking off, because that's what it might look like on paper from last season."
Veitch is now preparing for the Sir Graeme Douglas International in Auckland this weekend, and he expected some big jumps to be on his horizon.
Two years ago, Veitch produced a personal best of 7.99m for the long jump, which put him 6cm off the national record.
"If all things go well, we might see a new long-jump record and maybe a new 4x100m record. That would be lovely.
"[Otago's] got a lot of depth in the sprints, so it's nice to be in the mix with that as well."
Veitch relocated to Cambridge two weeks ago, but is still committed to representing Otago, "it's still home", and training under Wānaka coach Michael Beable.
"He's been with me since the beginning, so a lot of credit to him because pretty much every good performance I've put out was with his support," Veitch said.
He looked forward to returning to Dunedin next month as well to compete on his home track at the national track and field championships at the Caledonian.
Hill City-University runner Oli Chignell finished fourth in the men's 3000m with his second fastest time of 7min 58.28sec at the Potts Classic.
Jorja Gibbons (New Zealand secondary schools) finished fourth in the women's 100m with a time of 12.30sec.
