News & Updates

Competitors in the 2021 men’s Lovelock Mile. Photo: Mario Oostendorp

The Lovelock Classic is hosted in Timaru and named for Reefton born Jack Lovelock, one of New Zealand’s greatest athletes.

Lovelock won gold in the 1500 metres at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, setting a world record of 3:47.8 in the process. It was the peak of a career that included a gold medal for the mile in the 1934 British Empire Games, three world records, and high-profile victories against world-class fields in America and Europe.

John Edward (Jack) Lovelock was born 5 January 1910 at Crushington, near Reefton, where his father was then superintendant of a goldmine battery. The family moved to Greymouth, Temuka, and Fairlie.

After being dux of Fairlie primary school, and winning a national junior scholarship from Fairlie District High School, he went as a boarder to Timaru Boys’ High School, where he became head prefect and dux, won a University scholarship, and became the school’s best boxer and runner. At the University of Otago, he studied medicine. He then took up the award of a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, and lived overseas from then on.

The Lovelock Classic will be in its 14^th year in 2022. Athletes are encouraged to kick off the year with this first major meet in the calendar, and to embrace the typically sunny fine weather Timaru and South Canterbury have to offer over the summer.

Already confirmed to attend are respective 2021 women’s and men’s Mile champions Daniel Roswell and Katherine Camp, who will return to defend their titles. Also on the track will be a stellar women’s 100m field, with Zoe Hobbs, Georgia Hulls, Rosie Elliott, Anna Percy, Livvy Wilson and Brooke Somerfield entered to kick off 2022 in Timaru.

Entries close 11.45pm Tuesday 4 January 2022. For more information and to enter, click here.