The full results for last weekend’s Sussex Athletics championships are now on the website and although they can hardly be regarded as a vintage Championship there was still much to enthuse over.
Too many top athletes, particularly in the older age groups, missed the event for varying reasons but even so seven championship best performances tumbled and another was equalled while about 40 English Schools standard were broken which is a pretty good tally as the championships have come a little earlier in the season than usual.
Although the anticipated fireworks did not materialise in the senior 5000m it still produced a good quality event and a good race. It was an interesting result as Howard Bristow (Brighton & Hove) had a twelve lap battle with Neil Boniface (Horsham Joggers).
Bristow became only the second Veteran, club mate Nigel Gates took the title back in the nineties, to win the title sprinting clear over the last lap and finishing inside fifteen minutes in 14:59.9 to win by four seconds.
These longer track races so often prove to be processions in County races.
The equivalent race for the women, over 3000m, provided a nail biting three way battle but here the senior event was combined with the U20s and U17s and, ironically, it was the U17 Almi Nerurkar (Brighton Phoenix) who outsprinted U20 Martha Coyle (Brighton & Hove), who had done most of the pace making, and senior Izzy Coomber (Lewes) taking the senior title in 10:13.7s.
Nerurkar set a new CBP in 10:10.5s with Coyle smashing her PB with 10:11.5 and also smashing her PB in third place was Izzy Coomber and this proved a cracking battle.
There were some good results in the senior throwing events with Simon Evans (Worthing) winning the hammer throw with 48.87m and the first three all topping 46 metres while Luke Johnson Horsham took the javelin throw with 57.39m.
Although entries for the some of the older hurdles events seem to be thinner than usual Trevor Simcox’s mainly Brighton & Hove group turned in some pretty nippy times with Jamie Lambert completing a double winning the U17 100 and 400m hurdles races in 14.32 and 59.2s, Cameron Fillery clocking 14.58s, for the U20 110m hurdles and Matt Hewitt 14.91s for his senior victory while Gwilym Cooper clocked 52.9s for the senior 400m hurdles.
Amy Fitzpatrick (Horsham) recorded 12.28s for the U17 80m hurdles and the record breaking U15 hurdles on Saturday this really was fine hurdling weekend at Withdean.