Conditions for the 85th Sussex Schools track and Field championships at Crawley’s K.2 Leisure Centre on Saturday were almost perfect for records breaking and no less than eight Championships Best Performances were smashed.
Before many of the track athletes and spectators had arrived Freya Brennan from the West Sussex South Area (WSS) had tasted first blood in the Junior (U15) hammer throw. Brennan, who has been throwing exceptionally well this season broke the four year old Best with her opening throw of 42.83m and twice more she was to better the mark finishing with a personal best effort of 42.91s.
It was not long before Brighton & Hove’s (BHP), Liz Korczak, the reigning English Schools Junior javelin champion, shattered the two year old Intermediate (U17) Javelin record with 45.72m nearly ten metres further than the previous best and fellow BHP thrower Edan Cole improved a 13 year old CBP in the Senior (U19) javelin with a throw of 60 metres dead. .
In the Inter girl’s triple jump Kelsey Sutherland (WSS), who is also having a consistently good season set a new personal of 11.14m to add just one centimetre to a nine year old mark while Aaron Duncan (Ouse Valley) produced a dominating run in the Junior boys 800m.
Leading from start to finish and stretching his lead to more than six seconds Duncan clocked 2:02.26s which chopped more than two seconds off the CBP of 2:04.4,which has stood since 1989
Crawley rivals Katie Bristowe and Abigail Packham, who had so many great battles two years back when they were in the Junior age clashed again in the Inter girl’s 80m hurdles and in the repeat of the County championship battle last month it was Bristowe who had the edge.
Bristowe bettered the four year old CBP by nearly four tenths of a second in 11.22s with Packham also running faster than the previous CBP in 11.53s.
Bristowe's time also bettered Zoe McKinnon's twenty year old Sussex record of 11.4s
Junior long jumper Cleo Tomlinson from Mid-Sussex, who just one week back had won the Sussex Schools Junior Pentathlon title with a record added another in the long jump. A fine series of jumps culminated with a splendid final leap of 5.53m which was a Pb by some 20 centimetres and beat the two year old CBP of 5.39m. Incidentally Tomlinson’s jump also bettered the Inter CBP.
Late in the programme, in the senior shot putt Daniel-James Thomas (Hastings) smashed the 1980 CBP when he sent the implement over the fifteen metre mark reaching 16.55m..
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