WELCOME MESSAGE FROM THE CEO - SUMMER SEASON 2024-2025

Published Fri 11 Oct 2024

Welcome to the start of a new summer season in athletics!

After a great winter season of cross country, road racing and race walks and an inspiring period of Olympics, Paralympics and World U20s where the Australian Athletics teams performed so well, we are set to welcome everyone to SA Athletics Stadium for Round 1 of the Copyworld Toshiba Interclub this weekend.

Summer season will look a little different to recent years with the expansion of Interclub to 16 rounds of premiership competition, plus our Championship events. There are no Summer Series or Community Athletics Days on the schedule.

The Adelaide Distance Series continues with four events, this year in conjunction with Interclub, providing the opportunity for members and non-members alike to target PBs on the track. I am also rapt to welcome Series sponsor CMI Toyota. A further exciting sponsor announcement will be made in the coming weeks.

We are running four programs (A, B, C, D) across the premiership season and I encourage you to familiarise yourself with this adjustment to plan your training and competition schedule. In an innovation, juniors from age 10 to 13 years are welcome to take part in U14 sprints heats on Saturdays with similar aged peers, rather than necessarily being seeded as is our traditional format.

Athletes new to Athletics SA competition are welcome to Come ‘n Try at any Interclub for a discounted fee of just $10. We encourage Clubs to gather a group of newcomers on your Club host days to enhance the experience and support new athletes.

The VIVA SA All Schools Championships is on the last weekend of October, and I encourage all school aged athletes to get involved and encourage your friends to have a go too. It is a wonderful two days with over 400 participants expected to compete in school colours, as opposed to the normal club uniforms. This year’s National All Schools event will be in Brisbane in December.

We will host our fourth Adelaide Invitational on the evening of Saturday 15 February 2025, and we expect many of our Aussie athletes that starred at the Olympics and Paralympics to take part. SAVE THE DATE now as it will be the first opportunity for Australian athletics fans to see those athletes perform at a national level meet since Paris 2024.

Away from the track we are adjusting our business model as we no longer manage the Stadium canteen at Mile End – that is now being run by the SA Government’s Office for Recreation, Sport and Racing and we wish them all the best.

Together with Athletics Australia and the Australian Sports Commission we are engaged in the development of a National Participation Strategy and will shortly invite selected local stakeholder input at a workshop in Adelaide.

The AGM is approaching and there are two elected director positions open for nominations (until Monday 14th) and we are also seeking expressions of interest for two Board appointed positions.

We’d also like to welcome our new Communications Lead at Athletics SA, Jacob Stevens. He had worked with us in a freelance capacity during the 2023/24 season before joining the team in June 2024. We welcome your contribution to our socials and newsletter activity at any time.

Let me finish by wishing you all a positive and fulfilling summer of track and field - I hope that you are all fit and ‘good to go’. See you at the track!