Schools Championships ‘triple crown’ a highlight of Ella’s fine season
ELLA Rush crowned another successful summer by becoming the youngest athlete to win the “triple crown’ of English Schools Combined Events titles in the 33 years of the Championship.
That means lifting the title in each of the junior, intermediate and senior age groups in which the competitions are held, the first a five-event pentathlon and the other two a seven-event heptathlon.
Only Meghan Beesley, the Olympic 400m hurdler, had previously won all three titles her third coming aged 18, while Rush is still 17.
In a year of disappointment for Britain’s senior heptathletes, with Katarina JohnsonThompson getting injured during the Tokyo Olympics and Derbyshire’s rising star Niamh Emerson unable to challenge for a place at the Games because of a stress fracture, Rush quietly underlined that she is heading towards being the next big combined events hope.
The Amber Valley & Erewash AC athlete from Duffield, who also attends Repton School, scored a personal best 5,370 points to win the senior English Schools title, making her the top under-18 in the country and 11th in the adult rankings.
At the English Schools, she started by knocking four-tenths
of a second off her previous best in the 100m hurdles in 14.36 seconds.
She cleared 1.62m in the high jump to stay ahead of a field of 37 and went further clear by throwing the shot 11.37m. She finished day one with a PB 25.15 in the 200m.
Day two saw her take the lead in the long jump with 5.91m, 45 centimetres in front of the secondbest jump. A javelin PB of 32.49m with her final throw consolidated her position and an excellent 800m 2.18.42 put her more than 700 points clear.
“I am really happy to finish the season on such a high and want to thank everyone who has helped me achieve this milestone of three championship titles,” said Rush.
“I will now take a few weeks’ rest before starting winter training in preparation for what I hope will be another good season next year.”
Her Repton headmaster, Mark Semmence, said: “It is not enough to simply have talent. Ella has displayed all the hallmarks of a champion since her days at Repton Prep and deserves high praise for creating athletics history. We will continue to support her and know that the future is extremely bright for Ella.”
In her first season as an under-20 she won silver in the England Athletics under-20 heptathlon in her first senior specification event, which earned her an invitation to the British Championships/Olympic trials in Manchester.
There, she came fourth, with PBs in the hurdles, javelin and 800m; these ahead of the English Schools.
And she was handed her first Great Britain vest for the Manchester International at the SportCity arena.
Competing with a number of returning Olympians, she took silver with a season’s best long jump of 5.93m.
Her focus will now be adding to that first vest with a full focus on the World Junior Championships next year in Colombia.
A notable highlight of her season was a 1.75m high jump, the same height Denise Lewis cleared in securing heptathlon gold at the Sydney Olympics.
Rush is now having her coaching overseen by Amber Valley clubmate David Feeney, one of the rising names in British athletics coaching.