National 400m Champion Ben Offereins will tonight contest the final of the Men’s 400m at the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.
In perhaps the toughest of the three semi finals, Offereins placed third behind Michael Mathieu and Conrad Williams in a time of 46.11sec. He then had to endure an agonising five minute wait to see if his time would allow him to progress through to the final in his first international individual competition.
“In the end I guess it was enough, it’s not how I would have liked to have done it. They were some of the worst minutes of my life,” Offereins said afterwards.
“I’ve been having trouble with my first 200m and I’ve been running like that all season which is why I haven’t had the results. Since my last competition we’ve been working on it at training and it’s been going really well and last night it worked, I ran the first 200m brilliantly and then switched off”.
Turning his attention to the final, Offereins knows that it is anyone’s race.
“It’s not like I don’t have it in me. I just have to run it right, so I need to really go back and work on the mental side of things and try to get myself into the frame of mind where I can run my race correctly and if I can do that I’m there in the final.”
Joining Offereins in the final will be fellow Australians Sean Wroe and Joel Milburn, the first time since the Auckland Commonwealth Games in 1990 when Australia will have all three representatives in the last 8 in the men’s 400m.
Tonight’s final will be run at 12.30am AEST (9.30pm in Perth) with Offereins drawn to race from lane 2.