Knight anchors GB to 4x400m bronze
WSEH athletes impress on world stage with Lake finishing 6th
Windsor, Slough, Eton & Hounslow (WSEH) AC’s Jessie Knight anchored the 4x400m relay quartet to a bronze medal at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Glasgow on Sunday evening.
The quartet of Laviai Nielsen (Tony Lester; Enfield & Haringey), Lina Nielsen (Tony Lester; Shaftesbury Barnet), Ama Pipi (Linford Christie; Enfield & Haringey) and Knight (Marina Armstrong; Windsor Slough Eton & Hounslow) set a new national record time of 3:26.36 as they finished behind a strong Dutch team who took gold, and the USA who took silver.
They also overcame a controversial moment, which saw Pipi inadvertently knock the baton out of the hands of the Jamaican athlete Charokee Young before she handed over to Knight for the final leg. However, dropped batons are part and parcel of an event like this where there is a bunched field and neither the Jamaicans – nor any other team in the final – launched a protest.
The GB & NI Women’s 4x400m relay quartet came into the final off the back of clocking a national record in the heats, and they made one change for the final with individual 400m runner Laviai Nielsen coming in for Hannah Kelly (Les Hall, Bolton).
The British team captain led the team off in lane six, and she was neck and neck with Jamaica as the Dutch led from the front.
Nielsen, in her fourth race of the three days of these Championships, handed over to her twin sister Lina Nielsen in third and she kept the Brits in contention behind Jamaica. The USA then caught up with the other teams
and it became a four-way fight for three medals before Pipi picked up the baton. The drama then unfolded on the back straight of Pipi’s second lap as Jamaica’s Charokee Young unfortunately but inadvertently had her baton knocked onto the ground by Pipi as the Briton attempted to run past her.
Pipi kept her head to hand over to Knight with the team in third behind the Dutch and the USA, and the WSEH athlete held her position to bring the team home in bronze medal place, setting a record by 0.04 seconds (3:26.36)
After her strong third leg, Pipi commented: “It was a really messy leg, but I just stayed focussed on what I needed to do and tried to give it to Jessie in a good position. I think I did that.”
Anchor leg runner, Knight said: “I just wanted to stay as close as possible. Down the back straight I nearly went for the overtake but I tried not to get over excited because I didn’t want to burn up and lose the medal. The calibre of athletes [out there], I just wanted to do the team proud, and I didn’t want to lose that medal.”
Another athlete from the WSEH stable also competed in the championships in Glasgow, with Morgan Lake finishing sixth in the women’s high jump on Friday (March 1).
Lake (coach: Robbie Grabarz; club: Windsor Slough Eton & Hounslow) diced with fortune a little on the Glasgow runway as she twice cleared the bar on her third and final attempt to keep her hopes of a medal alive.
However, despite equalling a season’s best jump of 1.92m, she couldn’t force her way onto the podium. Lake said: “It didn’t really
go to plan from the start. I think when you miss your opening height, it always puts you on the back foot and I just needed to make sure I could be OK at that height. I had a lot of third attempts in that competition.
“I am happy with how it went in terms of my resilience and getting over those third attempts and keeping myself in the competition. I felt like I had two good attempts at 1.97m. I came sixth but there is plenty to learn from this.”
Lake’s performance in Glasgow was reminiscent of her agonising fourth-place finish in Budapest last summer, where she managed to go clear on her third and final attempts to stay in contention.
She needed two attempts to clear 1.84m and required all three to go over at 1.88m. Lake then had to repeat the trick to equal her season’s best of 1.92m, but she failed to clear 1.95m, and – with medal rivals having gone clear – she passed on her third attempt at the height after a foul.
This gave her one attempt at clearing 1.97m for a medal but despite a valiant effort, she fell just short and ended up in sixth place.
Lake added: “It has been a tough couple of weeks since the UK Championships. I jumped 1.85m there and that was a big shock for me. It knocked my confidence a lot, so going into this, I just had to be grateful for clearing every single bar.
“It was a step-by-step approach rather than racing to the end. At the beginning of the season my main aim was to medal at these Championships. Throughout the competition I still felt like I could do that. It’s frustrating not to do that but I will reflect on this over the next few days.”