Championship best performances continued to tumble on the second day of the Sussex Athletics Championships at Brighton’s Withdean Stadium on Sunday but the lack of sun and a chillier wind made life more difficult for the athletes and particularly the officials.
Generally, as was the case on Saturdays the CBPs that were that succumbed were of recent dates apart from the U17 Boys javelin mark that actually dated way back to 1966.
Adrian Diffey (Brighton & Hove) had thrown 58.04m with the old style javelin but on Sunday fellow Brighton & Hove thrower Edan Cole, who is coached by Bob Willows who was a throwing contemporary of Diffey, peppered that mark before pulling out a splendid 63.01m to not only win the title and smash the record but puts him at the top of the British rankings this season.
Early in the day’s activities Livvy Connor from Lewes squeezed the one year old U20 pole vault record by one centimetre to clear 3.71m but she already has a vault of 3.90m to her credit.
Moyo Daramola (Eastbourne) completed a clear sweep of 300 metre CBPs, the U17 and U15 girl’s marks fell on Saturday, when romping clear of his rivals to clock 38.00s. This took him some twenty metres clear of his nearest rivals, an English Schools standard and removed three tenths of a second from Joe Fuggle’s two year old mark.
Phoenix's Almi Nerurkar took five seconds off the previous CBP in the U17 Women's 3000m, winning the title with a time of 10:10.5 seconds,
Probably the most impressive senior performance of the two day event was a remarkable 400m hurdles debut from BUCS high hurdles silver medallist Bethany Close (Brighton & Hove).
Drawn in the outside lane of a combined age groups race Close streaked away from the rest of the field to win by ten second in 61.84s which must be one of the fastest ever debuts over the distance. She did miss Leanne Buxton’s nine year old record by just over one hundredth of a second but jumped straight into the Sussex Top Ten in third spot. I feel certain that Debbie Bain’s thirty year old Sussex record of 60.5s must surely be doomed particularly as this run has qualified her for a place in the British championships later in the season.
There were many impressive doubles over the weekend including the Crawley trio of Joshua Persad who did a sprint double in the U17 age group including a Schools Standard of 22.77s in the 200 metres, Senior club mate Kimberley Baptiste who also completed a sprint double and U15 middle distance runners Joe Smith of Crawley.
Josh Eeles from Horsham and Hasting's Kiera Aslett also did a middle distance double in the U17 age group as did Phoenix's Maia Hardman in the U15 Girls age group.
In the Under 13 Minithon Crawley's Daniel Tewogbade was the winner with 75 points which included a 1.45m High Jump. In silver medal position was Horsham's Matthew O'Dwyer on 70. He ran the fastest 150m of the day with 19.7 seconds and just one point behind was Brighton's Arthur Haines in bronze, helped by a 4.46m in Long Jump the best mark of the day.
View full Championships results on the Results Page.
reghook@ntlworld.com