A quartet of top line Sussex athletes missed the weekend’s County Championships, where they were certain of medals, to contest the National Combined Events championships at Bedford and they did it to good effect bringing back to Sussex one gold medal and two silvers. It was Elise Lovell (Hastings) who really did the business notching up a brilliant 5197 points to win the title after a nail biting second day.
She had started on Saturday with a PB in the 100m hurdles of 14.20 sec, high jump of 1.58m, PB in the shot of 10.03m and a PB in the 200m of 25.08 sec; placing her 3rd after the first day on 3072 pts. On the second day she started with a season’s best long jump of 5.70 m, (moving into 2nd place) a javelin throw of 32.44 m (moving into 1st place) and then completing the 800m in a personal best time of 2:18.60s to win the title by over one hundred points.
Her total lifted her to second place on the Sussex All-time list overtaking training companion, the veteran Leanne Buxton who was winning medals at the County championship by taking gold in the 400m hurdles and shot put as well as silver in the 100m hurdles.
There was a silver medal for Peter Moreno (Brighton & Hove) in the Decathlon Championships where Moreno, who had led the competition for much of the two days set a personal best of 6920 points but he was overhauled in the final event, the 1500m by Jack Andrew (Sale) losing the title by just 12 point to Jack Andrews (Sale). Moreno’s total was just two points short of Sebastian Rodger’s County record.
His marks were 11.08 – 6.77 – 11.53 – 2.00 – 49.15 – 14.66 – 28.46 – 4.60 – 44.22 – 5:17.55.
In the U20 Heptathlon Kate Garland, as did all the Sussex athletes on show, recorded a brilliant personal best of 4,739 points to take the silver medal behind Emma Canning (Whitemoss) by just 29 points and this takes her into fifth place on the Sussex All-Time list.
Garland strung together a series of sparkling performances (100m hurdles 14.97s., High Jump 1.64m., Shot 9.22m., 200m 25.96s., Long jump 5.56m., Javelin 27.22m., 800m 2:30.34s).
Beth Crocker (Crawley) scored a personal best of 4,514 points in 5th position with (100m hurdles 15.90s., High jump 1.61m., Shot 9.95m., 200m 27.02s., Long jump 5.38m., Javelin 26.32m.,
800m 2:26.94s.)
In a U18 400m hurdles Joe Fuggle from Wadhurst won in a new personal best time of 54.34s.