The 22-year-old engineering student who grew up in Dubbo and last year won the Rotary Safari Fun Run, will now look to repeat the effort in the Melbourne Grand Prix on Thursday night and at the Australian Championships a week later.

Woods’ race was one of the features of the Grand Prix carnival in Sydney and he produced the goods, winning by a mere 0.02 seconds in 3:37.63 after a thrilling battle with Mitch Kealey (Queensland) and Collis Birmingham (Victoria) over the last 200 metres.

All three runners beat the Olympic B-standard, the minimum selection requirement. All three are young and show promise of more to come but must do a little bit more to satisfy Australia’s selection criteria.

No one is likely to achieve the criterion for automatic selection - two A-standards (3:36.60) and a win at the nationals and no one can count on being selected with a B-standard time.

Last year was a good one for Woods who broke the magic four minute mark in taking out a major race in Dublin, Ireland.