Chandler soars for the silver
Matt’s Manchester medal
Central AC’s Matt Chandler was on great form as he took a superb silver medal at the recent England Combined Events Championships.
The 16-year-old Balfron High School pupil was competing in the Under-17 Decathlon at Manchester’s Sportcity — an event which brings together the best allrounders from throughout the UK.
But it was the Scots who were the ones to watch after Matt was one of three who swept the podium at the equivalent indoor championships back in March.
Matt won bronze that day behind winner Joel MacFarlane of Arbroath — who competes second claim for Central in Youth Development League matches — and Robbie Farquhar of Aberdeen and was looking to improve on that position but with both the other Scots there and a strong field of English and Welsh athletes it was going to be tough.
He opened with 11.95s in the 100m into a strong headwind for 10th place then moved up to third after leaping 6.35m in the long jump. Below par performances in the shot (9.94m) and his strong high jump (1.77m) saw him slip to fifth but in the final event of the day, an excellent 52.73 in the 400 metres was fourth quickest and enough for fourth overall behind leader MacFarlane, second-placed Farquhar and Rob Worman of Cheltenham in third .
Day two saw him open with an excellent 100m hurdles as he was just pipped for the win by Farquhar but he beat Worman to close the gap on him to 39 points.
He then produced his first personal best of the weekend in the discus with 36.95m to close the gap further. Matt then went into his strongest event, the pole vault, clearing 4.08 to win and move past Worman into third. He consolidated with another near personal best in the javelin (38.20m) and with the final event - the 1500 metres to come - he knew he needed to beat Farquhar by 11 seconds to get into silver medal positio.
He smashed his personal best by more than four seconds to run 4.51.65m finishing 22 seconds clear of the Aberdonian to take the silver medal with a new club record points total of 6167 points.
MacFarlane took the gold in a championship record 6594 points with Worman third, 70 points ahead of Farquhar.
Central AC’s Lewis Dow and Briagha Cook were on excellent form as they stepped up to competing at the England Championships for the first time, returning with personal bests — and in Lewis’ case a superb silver medal.
Both of them made the long trip to Bedford full of confidence after Scottish Championship wins with Dunfermline lad Lewis running in the 1500 metres and Balfron High’s Briagha in the 75m hurdles.
In the under 15 boys 1500m, 14 year-old Lewis was ranked seventh in the final and decided to gamble on tracking English Schools champion Ethan Hussey.
At the bell Hussey made for home and Lewis went with him and with 200m to go they were clear of the opposition. The English champion showed his class to win but Lewis’ time of 4.11.83 smashed his club record by more than five seconds.
In the under 15 girls 75m hurdles, Briagha ran a personal best 11.30 to finish second in her heat and third quickest qualifier for the semis. She then eased through from the semi-final with another fine run of 11.53.
In the final came she ran hard from the gun to finish fifth place in 11.44, an excellent position against the best athletes in Britain in her first UK level event.