Guildford Glory

The HW team enjoyed the biggest winning margin so far at the SAL match at Guildford on 15th June, taking the match by more than 100 points to strengthen the position at the top of the table. Despite missing some key athletes team manager Heather Jones managed to pull together a full squad to cover all of the events. Even without all rounder Jenny Steinitz, the women outscored the men by seven points, mustering a total of 155 points, thanks to sterling efforts from teenagers and vets alike. U17s Georgie Clarke and Rebekah Riches (below) had a busy day, with Riches winning the 400m A race in 64.4 and finishing second in the 800m A race in 2.31.0, and Clarke winning the 1500m in 4:48.6.

The teenagers also teamed up with Emilie Bokor-Ingram and Ann-Kathrin Mielke to take second place in the 4 x100m relay, and win the 4 x 400m along with Lisa Thomas and Emilie Bokor-Ingram – who delivered a storming last leg.

Laure Komoe won the 100m A string in a pb of 13.8, with Camilla Persson second in the B race. Emilie Bokor- Ingram (W35) won the A string 200m in 27.7 with Camilla again taking the B string race. Claire Grima won the 3000m A race with Gina Galbraith taking both the 3000m and 1500m B races. 

Lisa Thomas, Heather Jones and Alison Murray put in some sterling work across a range of events. Thomas won the women’s 2000m steeplechase A race (with Niamh Thompson first in the B race) and finished second in the 400m hurdles A race before helping the team to win the 4 x 400m relay. 

In the men's match endurance runner Jonathan Cornish completed an exhausting 24 hours taking the 1500m and 5000m races after earlier finishing second in the 800 metres (pictured above, with winner James Meiklejohn). The previous night Cornish had posted a 5000m personal best of 14:43.48 in the FastFriday meeting organised by Orion Harriers at Walthamstow. He finished fifth out of the 16 runners in a top class race to slice more than four seconds from his previous best set at Wimbledon Park at the end of March.

U23 Zac Stapleton won the 100m in 11.4, with Devonte Casely-Hayford second B string in 11.8. Other winners were Andrew Sarpong (long jump A), James Meiklejohn (400m B) and Lance Power (110m hurdles B). 

Andrew Sarpong and Morgan Rennie were second in the A and B races of the 400m, and another teenager, Hector Revill, along with David Lewin, ensured maximum points in the 1500m and 5000m as they won both B races.

Busiest athlete of the day was Mark Andrews who completed a one-day decathlon. He won the triple jump A and pole vault, hammer and javelin, shot and discus B events, took second place in the 110m and 400m hurdles A races, and rounded off his 10 individual events by taking third in the high jump A and long jump B. 

Meanwhile, at the British Milers Club Grand Prix meeting at Loughborough Charlie Eastaugh (below left) clocked a personal best of 3:54.59 in winning his 1500m race, while Fred Slemeck (below right) was third in his race in 3:57.29, half-a-second outside his lifetime best.