National athletics, at last, got back into action at Manchester over the weekend, with several top Sussex athletes competing and some collecting medals.
Unfortunately, attendance from many of the leading British stars, was sparse, but it gave a lot of youngsters the opportunity to perform on the top stage. The star, as far as Sussex was concerned, was certainly Yorkshireman George Mills (Brighton Phoenix), who had won the 1500 UK Indoor championships back in February. Mills played a waiting game in what was a modest pace and let rip down the home straight to add the UK Outdoor title to his name.
Clubmate Archie Davis was always in the mix but eventually finished fifth in 3:52.60s while Brighton & Hove’s Ian Crowe-Wright was 11th in 3:54.18s.
Mills managed to take the lead over Scotsman Neil Gourley in the final few yards to win in 3:51.39s. “I tried to be patient," he said, "and it paid off”.
In the 400m there was a silver and a bronze medal for Sussex, as Crawley’s Nic Baker ran a cracking race to take the silver medal in 46.91s behind Alex Knibbs (Amber Valley), who clocked 46.65s and just ahead of Brighton Phoenix’s Tony Harries, who came through very strongly, in 47.00s though he had clocked 46
.67s in the earlier rounds.
Cameron Fillery, from Saltdean, again battled with Plymouth’s David King in the 110m hurdles title but was much slower away at the start and was chasing hard 
all the way. King clocked 13.58s ahead of the rapidly closing Fillery who clocked 13.85.
There was also a silver medal for Broadbridge Heath’s Jade Lally who has been fighting back since having her first child last year. Lally led most of the competition with her best of 57.70m but was beaten by local youngster Kirsty Law, from Sale, who threw a personal best of 57.95m to take gold.
Both U20 youngster from Brighton and Hove, Lizzie Korczak and Crawley senior, Holly Turner picked up excellent sixth places, with Korczak just below her new best throwing 46.54m in the javelin throw and Turner clocking 54.28s in the 400m.
In her first-ever track 5000m another U20 athlete Almi Nerurkar clocked 16:21.64s to place 11th, a time that places her eighth on the Sussex All-time list and just two seconds off the U20 county record. Her Brighton Phoenix club mate Beth Kidger, who led through the middle of the 1500m race also placed 11th in 4:22.11s.