Team Tahiti and two members of New Caledonia\u2019s squad were the first athletes to arrive for this weekend\u2019s 2008 Oceania Grand Prix Series and the 2008 Oceania Championships set for next week at the newly certified Oleai Track and Field.<\/p>\n
The French Polynesia team, comprising 11 men and a woman, arrived on Saipan after a long flight from Tahiti at 7:15am yesterday, while the two members of the New Caledonia team took the red-eye flight from Noumea and touched ground at the Francisco C. Ada-Saipan International Airport at 3am.<\/p>\n
Tahiti\u2019s 110m hurdles champion and 2007 Pacific Games gold medalist Toriki Urarii appears to be the standout athlete for the French Polynesia team. <\/p>\n
Another athlete to watch out for is Maetoa Pito in the men\u2019s discus after throwing a national record in the open event with a throw of 50.62. On the same day, Maetoa broke the Tahiti junior record with the 1.75kg discus with a throw of 53.18.<\/p>\n
Tahiti team manager Leo Brinkfield said, \u201cwe are looking forward to a successful Championships, with four of our athletes being selected in the Oceania Grand Prix Team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oceania Athletics Association executive secretary Yvonne Mullins said the two athletes from New Caledonia will be part of the team\u2019s six-man delegation to the 2008 Oceania Championships and 2008 Oceania Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
Mullins said between 250 and 260 athletes are expected for the twin events, led by the CNMI\u2019s 31 athletes.<\/p>\n
Australia has 24 athletes, followed by Guam (23), New Zealand (18), Papua New Guinea (15), Fiji (15), Solomon Islands (12), Cook Islands (11), Tonga (10), Federated States of Micronesia (10), Nauru (10), Vanuatu (9), American Samoa (8), Palau (8), Kiribati (8), Marshall Islands (8), Samoa (8), Tuvalu (4), and Norfolk Island (4).<\/p>\n
The 2008 Oceania Grand Prix kicks off tomorrow with 16 events lined up at the Oleai Sports Complex, starting with women\u2019s high jump, women\u2019s shot put, and men\u2019s javelin throw at 5pm.<\/p>\n
The women\u2019s 1500 meter run is set at 5:30pm with the men\u2019s 1500m run, men\u2019s high jump, and women\u2019s triple jump coming up 15 minutes later.<\/p>\n
The women\u2019s javelin throw, men\u2019s shot put, and women\u2019s 400m hurdles are also scheduled at 6pm, followed by the men\u2019s 400m hurdles at 6:15.<\/p>\n
Set at 6:30pm are the women\u2019s 5000m run, the men\u2019s 5000m run, and the men\u2019s triple jump, while the women\u2019s 100m sprint and the men\u2019s century dash commence at 7pm and 7:15pm, respectively.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Team Tahiti and two members of New Caledonia\u2019s squad were the first athletes to arrive for this weekend\u2019s 2008 Oceania Grand Prix Series and the 2008 Oceania Championships set for next week at the newly certified Oleai Track and Field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}