Stars of the Future

On Sunday nearly 300 youngsters took part in the Young Athletes Open Meeting, the traditional curtain-raiser to the season in which the likes of Adam Gemili and Dina Asher-Smith have competed en route to sprint stardom. Originally staged at Crystal Palace, and now in its 38th Year, the meeting took on a new look for 2019 as an Open Graded Meeting, with athletes being seeded into their events according to pb, rather than age or gender, and prizes offered for any youngster who broke a meeting record, some of which still date back to the first staging of the meeting in 1981. Only one record was broken, for an event which was only recently introduced, the U17W 400m. The new record was set by Ella Fryer of St Mary's Richmond, who clocked 58.96.

HW youngsters had to fight hard for victories against strong opposition. Teenage sprinter Efe Peters posted two lifetime bests in winning his 100m and 200m races in 11.96 and 24.65. Josie Hughes won her under 11 600m race in 2:03.49 while Morgan Rennie was the fastest of 36 800m runners winning his race in 2:03.41, which was more than seven seconds faster than his previous pb set at Wimbledon Park last September. U15 Daniel Clarke won his 1500m race in 4:40.25 after finishing 20th out of 1304 runners in the Bushy Park 5km parkrun the previous day in a pb of 18:20.

Huge hanks to everyone from HW who helped, to Danny Gayle for the great barbecue, and our loyal band of officials from neighbouring Clubs who bookmark this event in their diaries every year.

Results

Sunday 7 April: HW Young Athletes Open Graded Meeting Full results: Power of Ten

George Longworth was 15th in the Self Transcendence Fools Paradise 10km road race in Battersea Park on Saturday, clocking 35:54. Tom Cheetham was third M50 in 41:09 with Gary Forde sixth M50 in 43:01. Mick Leigh was top M75 finisher in 60:31.  Full results

Gavin Mclaughlan (2nd claim) finished 2nd V55 in the Greater Manchester Marathon on Sunday in 2.46.07.

Parkrun

Many of the HW athletes who had expected to be racing in the National 12 Stage Road Relay Championships on Saturday turned out for a local parkrun instead, after injury and illness forced the team to pull out of the Birmingham event.  HW athletes led the 339-strong field home in Kingston, where Fred Slemeck won in 16:09, beating Jonny Earl by four seconds on his debut appearance in the event. Ross Franks was third out of 390 runners in Dulwich Park in15:47, also competing in the event for the first time. Andrew Penney was runner-up out of 789 runners on Clapham Common in 15:10, just three seconds behind the winner, with Finn Johnson fourth in 16:39.

Henry Silverstein was the best of 15 HW runners in the Wimbledon Common parkrun. He was runner-up out of 570 runners in a pb of 17:00, slicing three seconds off his previous best time set last June. Kieran White was also runner-up out of 434 runners on his debut in the Brighton & Hove parkrun in 16:46, posting the top age-graded performance of the day. Teenager Daniel Clarke finished 20th out of 1304 runners in Bushy Park in a pb of 18:20.