Sussex athletes scooped up three silver and two bronze medals and a British U20 400 m indoor record, at the British Indoor Championships and European trials at Birmingham over the weekend.
It was Brighton & Hove’s Amber Anning who set the new record and it was a good one. It was way back in 1970, 49 years ago, that Marilyn Neufville clocked 53.01s in similar circumstances. Running strongly Anning did well to make the final where she excelled herself to take the silver medal behind Thames Valley’s Zoey Clark who clocked 52.85s to the Sussex runner’s 53.00s a magnificent run and the fastest ever 400m indoor time by a British athlete.
Former 1500m champion Brighton Phoenix’s Charlie Da’Vall Grice renewed his 1500 metre rivalry with Edinburgh’s Chris O’Hare over 3000m but after a good battle it was the Scotsman who again had the edge winning the title in 7: 52.86s to Grice’s pb of 7:54.33s.
The third silver medal went to 60m hurdler Cameron Fillery from Saltdean, who like Anning did well to reach the final where he finished just two hundredths of a second behind David King (Portsmouth) 7.80s another pb.
The bronze medals came in the shot putt where Sam Heawood (Crawley) putt 16.38m and the 800 metres where Spencer Thomas (Phoenix) clocked 1:49.73s while club mate George Mills, who had run 1:49.42s in the semi-final slipped away into fifth place in 1:52.28s.
Crawley’s George Turner set a personal best of 5.15m in the pole vault to take an excellent fourth place.
Phoenix’s Rob Fitzgibbon and Archie Davis took fifth and sixth places respectively in the 1500m in 3:47.41 and 3:49.24 and another Phoenix athlete Beth Kidger took ninth place in the women’s 1500m in a pb of 4: 24.26s,
A very good weekend for Sussex performers.
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