Forth Valley medal romp

Best of British at Balmoral

Forth Valley Orienteers had a tremendous British Championships at Balmoral, landing 22 medals in the individual championships - nine of them gold - backed up by seven more in the relays, including both men’s and women’s elite titles.

It was a breakthrough weekend for James and Rebecca Hammond, with both being crowned British champions on their major race debuts.

James took control of the M12 race from the second checkpoint and was never headed from there on, returning in 19.56 ahead of David Ivory (Interlopers). Rebecca contested the W10 lead with East Lothian’s Emily Atkinson at first, but made a crucial breakthrough on the fourth leg, and came through by 2½ minutes for the win, in a time of 22.01.

There was more glitter on the way for the junior athletes as Peter Molloy carved out victory in M16 in 43.08 for his first British title since 2014 and Grace Molloy showed her racing class with a 3½ minute margin in retaining the W18E trophy, finishing in 51.01.

A change in age class made no difference to Hazel Dean, as she took the W55 title for her fifth British title in the last seven years while in the shorter distances, there were golds for Chris Wood (W70S - 86.35), Fiona Berrow (W21L - 70.34), Lucy Hensman (W14B - 45.14) and Hanna Brindley (Open Yellow - 30.06).

Silver medals were gained by Jason Inman (M45 - 68.18), David Godfree (M40 - 70.38), Martin Dean (M60 - 64.22), Jen Leonard (W45S - 51.57), Sarah Tullie (W21S - 62.13), Simon Finch (M35S - 108.40), Katie Hensman (W21B - 36.11) and Campbell Spenceley (Open Yellow - 30.55) while Chris Smithard (M21E 93.58), Will Hensman (M35 81.43), Lizzie Stansfield (W16 - 49.10) and Beccy Osborn (W45 - 73.10) all claimed bronze.

Sunday’s relays brought more success with the elite women’s team of Grace Molloy, Anwen Darlington and Fanni Gyurko and the elite men - Chris Smithard, Mark Nixon and Kris Jones - both claiming gold and dethroning defending champions Edinburgh University.

This was backed up by a host of minor medals in the veteran classes including silver and bronze in M40 (Roger Goddard, Jason Inman and Dave Godfree ahead of Ross McLennan, Fraser Purves and Brad Connor); silver in M50 (Jon Cross, Steve Nicholson and Ben Stansfield) and M70 (Lindsey and Geoffrey Hensman and Dave Coustick) and bronze in W50 (Cathy Tilbrook, Louise Longhurst and Hazel Dean).