The Brighton & Hove senior team set what is believed to be the the highest placing ever by a Sussex team in the National 6-stage road relay championships at Sutton, Birmingham on Saturday.
Despite the absence of two of their top performers they finished a brilliant 12th in 1:50:15, less than three minutes behind title winners Tonbridge and had they been at full strength they would have been challenging for medals.
Team manager Howard Bristow started proceedings, leading them out on the first leg and did well to bring them back in 15th position in a time of 17:55 on what is usually the most competitive leg of the day.
The young and ever improving Stephen Ferroni then ran an excellent second leg taking them into 6th position with the team’s fastest leg of the day and 13th fastest overall, 17:31.
Max Dumbrell ran a steady leg to keep the team in contention in 12th in 18:38 and handed over to Ian Crowe-Wright who had a great run, posting their second fastest leg in 17:42, the fastest on the fourth leg, and taking the team to 4th, their highest position of the day.
James Turner, 18:53, and Graham Godden, 19:36, completed with day, slipping back to 9th and 12th respectively.
This was however a great team effort and they repeated their efforts of a couple of weeks back as the sixth South of England team to finish.
Brighton Phoenix, who had placed 16th last year, were well below full strength but Ross Skelton set them off to a good start placing 26th in 18:11 while on the second leg Sam Wade dropped eight places in 18:58.
Patrick Acaye moved up to 33rd in 19:04 and team captain John Guilmant took them into 25th place on the fourth lap in 18:21.
Paul Weir slipped to 33rd in 20:49 while a sparkling final leg by Jon Pepper, the Sussex Cross-country champion, took the team up to 25th on the final leg in 18:55.
Their position was improved to 24th after the disqualification of one of the teams ahead of them. However 24th place out of 67 teams was a pretty good effort.
Lewes 10
Paul Navesey from Crawley notched up a comfortable victory in the “Lewes Downland 10 mile” in warm conditions on Sunday morning.
Navesey finished one minute ahead of Herne Hill’s John Kettle in 60:08 to Kettle’s 61:11 with the home club’s David Robinson moving up one place from last year but taking a little longer to do it by clocking 53:33.
Fellow Lewes athlete Emma Rollings was the first woman to finish clocking 71:49 virtually three minutes ahead of club mate Helen Sida who clocked 74:43 while Megan Taylor made it a clean sweep for the Lewes club placing third in 74:49.
Ben Martin and Jasper Baker who are still in the U17 age group kept the Lewes Club to the fore in the 5-mile Fun Run finishing first and second in 30:18 and 31:08 while unattached Lucy Egan led the women home in 36:31.