Charlie Grice (Brighton Phoenix) made sure of a trip to the World championships at Beijing next month when he cracked the Qualifying standard in a hard fought race at Heusden-Zolder in Belgium at the weekend.
Grice was squeezed into second place in in 3:35.29s, nearly one second inside the standard required, and as the reigning British champion he now gets automatic selection in the U.K team that will be announced after this weekend Anniversary Games at the Olympic Stadium.
Buxton and Anning win the Southerns
Leanne Buxton and Amber Anning both won Combined Events titles at the South of England Combined Events championships at Bedford over the weekend. Brighton School teacher Buxton won the senior Heptathlon title despite now being in the Veteran age group. Clocking 14.79s for the hurdles, high jumping 1.48m, putting the shot 11.27m and running 27.16s Buxton lead the event overnight while on the second day she leapt 5.55m in the long jump, threw the javelin 30.00 and clocked 2:31.45s for the 800m to total 4,648 points more than 100 points ahead of Windsor’s Celia Quansah.
On Sunday Brighton & Hove’s Amber Anning did not take control of the U15 Pentathlon until the penultimate discipline despite leaping 5.16m in the long jump clocking 12.34s in the hurdles and putting a PB of 10.95m in the shot put. A high jump of 1.54m put her into the lead, which she consolidated with a fine 2:27.84s run in the 800m to give her a comfortable victory with 3,218 points.
In the U15 3,000m championships, also at Bedford, Ben Martin (Lewes) finished sixth in 9:46.01s.
YDL
In the Final round of the Lower Age Group UK Youth Development League both Crawley, in Premier Division 2 and Brighton & Hove in North East One finished in fifth place and will spend another season in their respective Leagues