Harriers play their part for Yorkshire
THERE was success for the Holmfirth Harriers team at the CAU Intercounties Cross Country Championships.
Seven Harriers represented Yorkshire in the event Prestwold Hall near at Loughborough.
The invitation-only event is always strongly contested, with Yorkshire regularly winning not only team medals in each individual event, but the overall team score such is the strength of the county.
The highlight of the day was the Under 20 Ladies race which included the Holmfirth trio of Olivia Sykes, Lucy and Erica Byram.
Their race was run over a tough 6km course which was getting muddier by the minute.
The Yorkshire team packed well for much of the race with never more than a handful of places between the team.
In the final kilometre however it was Sykes, who had moved up into 36th position, that led the team home from Jemima Elgood (Ilkley) in 38th, Imani Wilson (Hallamshire) 40th and Lucy Byram 41st.
That was enough to secure team bronze for Yorkshire, Erica Byram had a strong run for 64th and was Yorkshire’s fifth counter.
In the 3km Under 13 Girls’ race, Isobel Richardson, representing Yorkshire for the first time finished 89th in a field of 304.
Richardson was sixth Yorkshire athlete, with the first four counting to the team position and claiming a silver medal.
Juliette Branford has had a super cross country season and her 53rd place was enough to count for the four-athlete team in the Under 17 Girls’ race, with Yorkshire finishing just outside the medal places in fourth.
The Under 20 men saw Holmfirth with one representative, Aaron Kettlewell.
He narrowly missed out on a team silver medal, finishing fifth counter in 58th place, but had done well to work through the field after starting further down the Yorkshire team starting pen.
As with the Under 20 Women’s race, this acted as the trial race for the World Cross Country Championships in Uganda at the end of March.
Yorkshire’s Jonathan Shields won the race and secured his place in the GB team.
In the Senior Women’s race, which was the third in the programme, took place over the same 8km course as the Under 20 men’s race.
Helen Berry ran strongly to finish second Yorkshire counter in 44th place.
Yorkshire’s top runner, Claire Duck of Leeds City, had an excellent run in 2nd place.
Unfortunately with a few Yorkshire athletes having dropped out of the team before the day, the Senior Women placed fifth – the first time in years that they have been out of the medals.
The following weekend Helen Berry competed in the British Masters Cross Country Championships, in Liverpool.
The race includes all age groups above 35 years and Berry was first across the line and first V40 section, with former Olympian and V65 Nick Rose, coming home 27 seconds behind in second.