It was certainly Ladies day on the first day of the Sussex Athletics Championships when they returned to the Withdean Stadium in Brighton for the first time for a couple of decades.
I can find three broken championship best performances and one equalled, which is not a vintage haul but not too bad by the standards of recent championships and they were all by young ladies.
The light breeze, despite primarily a head wind as far as the sprinters were concerned, gave the athletes little concern or help during the six hours of competition.
Amber Anning (Brighton & Hove) showed that she is one of the most promising of Sussex youngsters by streaking, as was to be expected, to victory in the U17 300m nearly ten metres clear of her nearest rival in a record breaking 39.52s. Ironically the hand timing recorded a record equalling performance of 39.6s but electronic timing was in use this year and that gave the faster time.
Some measure of the performance was that this bettered the English Schools National standard while second placed Louise Saunders, although several metres adrift, clocked an Entry standard time of 41.04s.
Anning was later to add the 100 metres crown to her name in similar dominating style.
The U15 300 metres also produced a CBP when Calysta Morris (Eastbourne) bettered Saunders’s one year old mark of 42.6s again with the aid of electronic time by recording 42.55s.
Crawley's Katie Bristowe notched up another CBP when winning the U15 75m hurdles in 11.46s from club mate Abigail Packham, who clocked 11.57s and both were inside the previous mark and indeed achieved English Schools standards.
In the U15 shot putt Naomi Owolabi (Phoenix) equalled Brighton & Hove’s Claire Smithson’s nineteen year old of record of 11.42m and another Schools standard and like Anning added the 100 metres title to her name at the end of the afternoon.
The U17 men’s hammer competition saw Ben Hawkes (Worthing) came very close to the CBP with his opening effort of 57.18m but despite three other efforts well above 50 metres he remained less than a metre shy of setting a new mark. Hawkes was also to add a second title to his name when reaching 43.64m in the discus throw.
Another to record a throwing double was Horsham Blue Star’s Leo Walker who threw the U15 discus 35.22m and putt the shot 10.42m.
In the Under 13 girls Minithon and following in her big sister's footsteps, Brighton's Ruby Anning shared the gold medal position with her Horsham namesake Ruby Walker. Both girls scored 70 points and each had strong individual wins, Anning in the 150m in a swift 20.6 and Walker in the shot put with 7.43m. Just two points behind in the bronze medal position was Horsham's Cleo Tomlinson, who jumped a fine PB of 1.51m in the High Jump.
View all Championship results on the Results Page.
reghook@ntlworld.com