Sprinter Zoe Hobbs (Ngāruahine) booked her spot at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo later this year with a season-best 11.07-second victory in the women’s 100 metres in Finland this week.
The 27-year-old’s confidence-boosting run at the Paavo Nurmi Games in Turku on Wednesday (NZT) equalled the automatic qualifying standard for the September championships.
“The fact it is a world champs standard takes a little bit of weight off my shoulders,” a delighted Hobbs said following the race, NZ Sports Wire reported.
After clocking 11.09 seconds in her heat, Hobbs crossed the finish line ahead of Hungary’s Boglárka Takács (11.11) and Liberia’s Thelma Davies (11.14) to take the win in the final.
“It felt like my start could have been sharpened a little bit from the heat, and that was a strong part of the final. My start was good in (the final) and I could have relaxed a little more towards the end,” she said.
“But we’re still in June, we’re working towards September and overall there are some things I can take away and work on. Knowing there is more to work on gives me confidence.”
Hobbs has challenged herself to find the performance gains that will deliver the crucial hundredths of a second she’s chasing.
“I’m really just trying to find all the little bits and put them together,” she said.
Before this week’s race, she admitted struggling to reach the level she wanted, according to NZ Sports Wire.
“I’ve been a little bit frustrated with my comps lately. There have been some good things and some bad things in training before I left home. I just didn’t feel like I could put it down onto the track.”
But in Finland on Wednesday, she expressed satisfaction she’d finally managed “to piece together a race that I know has been there in training”.
At the 2023 world championships in Budapest, Hobbs ran 11.02 seconds in the 100 metres semifinals, missing a place in the final by just one hundredth of a second.
She remains Oceania’s fastest-ever woman, with a personal best of 10.96 seconds set in Switzerland in July 2023.
