ATHLETICS

LOCAL ATHLETES EXCEL

Courier Country athletes revelled in the mud representing East of Scotland at the UK Inter-Counties Cross-Country Championships at Prestwold Hall, Loughborough. Scottish athletes excelled in the under-15 girls’ championship in which Scottish champion Lily Jane EvansHaggerty (Scottish West) placed second timed at 19 mins 10 secs behind South of England champion Bethany Cook (Sussex) who had a strong second half to clock 18:52. Fife AC’s Anne Hedley, second as an under-13 to Cook last year, followed home to claim individual bronze in 19.15. Scotland West won team gold, while East took team silver with Hedley backed up by Pippa Carcas, ninth, Isla Calvert, 39th, and Carrie Banks, 61st.

Yorkshire edged Scotland East by a mere three points in the under-20 men’s team race in which Edinburgh AC’s Freddie Carcas was placed eighth (30.53), chased by Fife’s Tristan Rees 13th (31.12). Joe Arthur came home 31st and Faisal Khursheed, 40th, to tie up the team scoring – 92 points to Yorkshire’s 89 with Kent in third.

Ben Sandilands (Fife AC) led home the East under-15 boys’ team, finishing 29th, with the team placing fourth, a mere three points shy of bronze medallists Surrey. Hampshire’s Mahamed Mahamed proved too strong for a quality senior men’s field in the second half of the 12km race. Content to initially follow last year’s winner Andy Vernon, the 20-year-old powered away for a big winning margin.

He said: “I wanted to sit in and see how I felt and I felt good. I put a burst in and nobody came with me.” Mahamed finished in 42:23 and he had a 49-second winning margin ahead of Sam Stabler (Leics. & Rutland) who described the quagmire as the toughest he had ever run in, second in 43:12. Lachlan Oates placed 7th (44:05) for Scotland West, while Aberdeen’s Will Mackay led home Scotland East in 23rd (45.27) with Logan Rees (Fife AC) 39th (46.24). Middlesex took the team crown ahead of Lancashire.

Phoebe Law achieved the rare feat of winning senior women’s gold medals in the English National, Inter-Counties and South of England Championships.

The Kingston athlete, running for Surrey, revelled in the muddy conditions and proved too strong for her opponents in the 8km race winning in 32:51 to take gold by 42 seconds.

Metro Aberdeen’s Kayleigh Jarrett was East’s first placer in 20th (35.19) with Stephie Pennycook (Ed. Univ./ Fife AC) 27th – 35.42. Fife A’s Helen Sharpe followed home in 45th -36.44. The East team placed sixth as Surrey took team gold.

Dundee Hawkhill’s Kristof Hornyik finished 71st for East in the under-17 men’s race with Robert Sparks (Fife AC) in 84th. Rory Leonard (North East England), who fell and suffered concussion as a non-finisher at the English Championships, finished a clear winner. Team East Lothian’s Cera Gemmell was East’s first home in the Under 17 Women’s race, placing 5th.

An all Fife AC East of Scotland quartet placed 20th team in the Under-13 girls’ championship. Isla Thoms was the leading finisher in 40th, Ruby Methven 51st, Isla Hedley, running half of the race in one shoe, 84th, and Esme Thoms 180th. Kent won team gold.

TITLE DEFENDED: Josh Kerr (Edinburgh AC and New Mexico University) successfully defended his US National Colleges indoor mile title with a run of 3.57.02 at College Station, Texas.

Kerr won the race with a devastating late-race move. Kerr was near the front of the race throughout, leading the second and third laps and finally bursting away over the final lap covered in 27.52 seconds.

The indoor and outdoor champion in 2017, Kerr duly made it three in a row at this year’s finals.

World under-20 200m champion Michael Norman clocked a world indoor record of 44.52 to win the 400m.

The University of South Carolina student had seen Auburn University’s Akeem Bloomfield clock a Jamaican indoor record of 44.86 in the first race of the two-heat final just moments before. Norman, 20, contesting just his third indoor 400m race to date, breezed through the first lap in 21.33 and maintained his lead to cross the line in 44.52.