On and almost perfect night for middle distance runners hosts of athletes left the Phoenix Open meeting at Withdean Stadium on Wednesday evening knowing that they had achieved their personal best times.
One thing that was missing however was a Ground Record.
With a talented “A” 800m race that had attracted top line performances Brighton & Hove’s Chris Carter was able to relax knowing that his 1968 time of 1:47.5s remained intact.
Despite the promoters efforts to get a field strong enough to take the record and providing a good pacemaker, something that Carter did not have nearly fifty years ago, a cracking race saw Kyle Langford from Shaftesbury/Barnett squeeze home ahead on Birchfield’s Elliott Giles in 1:45.57s to 1:47.69s.
The promoting club’s Spencer Thomas, was just outside his best in third place in 1:48.35s but club mates Finley Bigg and Archie Davis, who is still in the U20 age group both cracked their previous best finishing fifth and seventh respectively in 1:49.49s and 1:49.69s as did Brighton & Hove’s Ian Crowe-Wright and Eastbourne’s Chris Dodd who finished first and second in the “B” race in 1:51.51s and 1:52.44s.
In the “A” 1500 metres there was a tremendous battle between Josh Eeles (Phoenix) who is an U20 performer and U17 athlete Thomas Eames (Brighton & Hove) with Eeles just having the edge in 3:54.41s to Eames in 3:54.86s which was not only took seven seconds off his previous pb but was also a qualifying standard for the “Commonwealth Youth Games”.
Almi Nerurkar (Phoenix) won the mixed B race in yet another pb of 4:28.31s while the “A” 3000m race was won by Steven Ferroni (Brighton & Hove) in 8:34.60s from U20 performer Dan Stidder (Phoenix) who clipped ten seconds off his previous best in 8:45.56s.
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