Limestone Coast athlete Loraine Baron recently competed at the biennial Australian Masters Games at the SA Athletics Stadium in Adelaide, making the podium for almost every event she entered.
Over eight days, South Australia’s capital city was a hive of activity with more than 8000 participants competing in 50 sports across 68 venues, representing Australia’s largest multi-sport participation event.
Baron competed in the 70-74 years women’s age group, winning the 60 metre and 100 metre sprints, placing second in the 200 metre race, third in the shotput and lining up in the discus against competitors from around Australia and even from New Zealand and the United States of America.
“I had a very successful weekend at the Masters Games in Adelaide,” Baron said.
“I met up with lots of my friends that I have been competing with for over 23 years.”
The track and field athlete said she could not believe she not only claimed victory in the 60 metre sprint, but recorded a time of 11.87 seconds.
“The first one was the 60 metres, I was a little bit concerned because there were eight starters and that’s really rare because my age group might have three, five at the most, I have not had a lot of people in my age group for quite some time,” she said.
“Everybody is starting to travel again and get back out into the world and do things they used to do, it’s taken a little while and this might have been good timing for a lot of people.
With the larger field in the event, Baron said she would have been happy to just to stand on the podium.
“The last lot of my lead up of my training was really hard and Sally, my coach, took me out of my comfort zone and made me work hard and I think I have had a lot better preparation than I have had for the last couple of years.”
Baron said she was “really amazed and pretty happy” to beat her personal goal of under 20 seconds for the 100-metre sprint, with the stopwatch clicking off at 19.23 seconds.
“I was not concerned anything about time, it was me basically trying to get a position on the field when I was running, to beat the person next to me if I could.
“For the 200 metre race, I would not have expected to actually get a podium because the 200 metre is a lot harder.
With a solid preparation of over a year of training, Baron said she would expect to do better, but pushed hard to get some good times in the 200 metre races, even at home.
“I managed a silver and came second to a lady from New Zealand who has been able to beat me in a 200 metre in the past, but I usually beat her in a 60 metre and 100 metre (race).
“Shotput I had practiced for and I got third and I was really happy with that because it was a big field again.”
