Thanks very much to Martin Etchells who had a very busy weekend as Meeting Director for the Sussex Indoor championships and then produced reports while I was sans computer for several days.
There were few medals for Sussex athletes at the weekend’s National Indoor championships at Birmingham and the BUCS Championships at Sheffield.
Just one gold medal and that fell to County 400m hurdles record holder Bethany Close who forsook the hurdles and raced to a clear cut 200m victory in 24.35s.
There was a silver medal for Brighton Phoenix’s Charlie Grice who was eased out of top spot by Edinburgh’s Jake Whiteman after a great battle in the 1500m at Birmingham in 3:43.83s to Grice’s 3:44.57s.
There was also a bronze at Birmingham for Brighton & Hove’s Amber Anning who is only in her first year as an U20 performer but took third place behind internationals Finette Agyapong (Newham), who is shortly off to the Commonwealth Games (23.30s). Second was Meghan Beesley (Birchfield) 23.57s while Anning clocked 23.94s, her third time inside 24.00sec over the weekend.
Other leading Sussex performances at Birmingham came from Spencer Thomas (Phoenix) 1:51.48s in fourth place, fifth place for Sam Heawood (Crawley) in the shot putt with 15.83m, a sixth place in the long jump for Elise Lovell from Hastings, who now competes for Havant, with a leap of 5.98m and eighth place with 1.71m for Crawley’s Lillie Franks.
There was also a sixth place for Brighton & Hove’s Cameron Fillery in the 60m hurdles in 8.03s on Sunday after he had placed an excellent fourth, at his first attempt, in the BUCS championships on Saturday in 8.19s.
Crawley’s George Turner and Brighton & Hove’s Katie Garland both finished sixth in their events at Sheffield. Turner cleared 4.60m in the pole vault and Garland leapt 1.70m in the high jump.
There was also an eighth place in the 3000m for Chichester’s Beth Garland, no relation, in 10:02.98s.
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