Chichester’s Ben Collins and Worthing’s Emma Macready and Luke Ellard made certain of becoming Sussex League champions in the New Year by notching up their third victories in the Sussex Cross-country league event Lancing Manor on Saturday.
Gale force winds again affected the athletes and the officials but luckily they were not so severe or cold, and were South West rather north West, as the winds that battered the second fixture at Bexhill a couple of weeks back.
Ellard was the first of the “to be” champions on the scene and he repeated his domination of the U13 boy’s age group by taking charge of the race and leading the field a merry dance to win in 10:58 with Isaac Elam (Hastings) and Will Carey (Lewes) again chasing him home in 11:09 and 11:10.
Collins, in the U15 boy’s event employed similar tactics to Ellard taking full control of the race from the start and never giving his rivals a chance of getting close enough to do any damage.
Clocking 16:06 he finished some sixty metres clear of Georgie Pool (Hastings) 16:19 and Tomer Tarragano Brighton & Hove 16:26 who followed him home, as they had done in the previous race in second and third place.
Following her below par run at Liverpool the previous weekend Emma Macready made no mistake at Lancing. She steamed away from her rivals from the gun and ended up well over one minute clear of them recording a pretty impressive 18:20 which was faster than her winning time in this event twelve months back when conditions were much better.
Joscelyn Lowden from Lewes chalked up probably her best run, as a senior, taking second in 19:31 just five seconds ahead of Haywards Heath’s Lizzy Coomber, who had been runner up in the season’s first race but fifth in the second event.
The other races all provided first time winners with Stephen Ferroni (Brighton & Hove), who was deprived of becoming the youngest ever winner at Goodwood in October, taking the race after a good battle again with club mate Howard Bristow, Chris Smith (Haywards Heath) and Paul Navesby (Crawley).
It was not until they were into the second half of the event that this leading quartet eventually broke up with Ferroni squeezing the pace and moving clear with Bristow in close attendance but it was not long before the now 18 year old Ferroni was out on his own and he stretched his lead all the way to the finish in 28:42, nearly half of one minute clear of Bristow 29:10 with Navesby just snatching third place on the line from last year’s winner Smith in 29:22.
This was some two minutes slower than his winning time last year and further underlines the quality of Macready’s run in the senior women’s race.
Maya Ramnarine from Hastings was a first time winner in the U13 girl’s race in 12:03 ahead of Milly Dickinson (Phoenix) 12:08, who had won the first race at Goodwood, and Amelia Wright (Horsham) 12:09.
Maya’s club mate Ellen Crombie took the U15 girls race in 15:51 ahead of Bodyworks Poppy Mercer 16:20 and Bexhill winner Almi Nerurkar (Phoenix) 16:39 while fellow Phoenix athlete Oliver Johnson, who had won at Goodwood but missed Bexhill, made no mistake in taking the U17 race in 17:18 from Bexhill winner Dan Stidder (Eastbourne) 17:32 and Worthing’s Sam Whitby 17:55.