Olympic Games hopeful Edward Osei-Nketia has the New Zealand schoolboy record and a ticket to Tokyo 2021 in his sights after making a quick return from the broken arm he sustained in a bike crash last month.
The national 100m champion was given the all-clear to return to training this week, four weeks ahead of schedule, after fracturing the radius near his right elbow when he flipped off his bike near Scots College.
Although he is still unable to practice block starts, Osei-Nketia is out of his sling and should be ready to race again at the New Zealand secondary schools athletics championships in Tauranga on December 11.
“My physio said that’s the best place to fracture if you have a fracture,” Osei-Nketia said from Newtown Park, where he was training alongside sprint rival and training partner Joseph Millar on Thursday morning. “Now I’m back here and I’ve got to say I’m feeling pretty lucky.
“I was just going for a bike ride but I was going full speed down the hill and my feet slipped and got caught and I flipped over.
“It was only 12 days [that I was off training] but it was a good way to just refresh mentally and physically and focus on my exams, and hopefully I’ve passed most of my exams.”
The Scots College leaver will be looking to write his name into the record books at his final secondary schools championships after atrocious weather conditions dashed his chances of bettering Benjamin Potter’s 10.60 seconds effort, which has stood since 1997, in Wellington last year.
The 19-year-old has a personal best time of 10.19 sec, ranking him fourth on New Zealand’s all-time list.
Osei-Nketia will need to run 10.05 sec to achieve the automatic qualifier for next year’s Olympic Games but said both he and Millar have made it their mission to reach the lofty target this summer. They can also qualify via the IAAF world ranking system, though would likely need to race overseas to boost their score.
“At the moment, with Covid, the focus is just on trying get to the Olympics and try and run as many good races as possible. But let’s just say I’ve got a phobia of bikes now,” Osei-Nketia said.
Osei-Nketia has some ground to make up on Millar. As well as being sidelined for the past 12 days, he revealed the Commonwealth Games representative has the edge on him in training.
“It’s going really good. Joseph and I are bringing out the best of each other. We’re just concentrating on having a good season in New Zealand and hopefully in March we can go to Australia and compete over there to get some more points to get the [Olympics] qualifier.”
