Good as Gold
Good as gold
As HW’s Dwayne Cowan was helping the British 4x400m relay team qualify for IAAF World Championships in Doha in September, 95 Club athletes were in action in the Surrey County Championships in Kingston over the weekend, collecting 14 medals (four gold, three silver and seven bronze); while in Nuneaton Charlie Eastaugh also bagged two gold medals in the 800m and 1500m in the Warwickshire Championships.
On Sunday 20 year old sprinter Ryan Facey lifted his first Surrey title when he stormed to victory in the 100m final in a lifetime best of 10.78 seconds into a slight headwind. He came agonisingly close to making it a double gold performance, having been edged into second place in the 200m final by a hairsbreadth the day before in 22.05 – yet another pb.
Busiest athlete was all-rounder Mark Andrews. He picked up two gold medals in the senior high jump and triple jump along with silver in the 400m hurdles. He was also fourth in the 110m hurdles and fifth in the discus. Youngest HW athlete in action was 12-year-old Mabel-Rose Scales who comfortably retained her U13 Girls high jump title.
Fred Slemeck took silver in the 5000m, with Jonny Earl fourth. Tom Drayton took the silver medal in the U20 Men’s 3000m on his Surrey Championships debut, while Ellen Weir also raced to the silver medal in the women’s under 17 3000m, the first time she had run the distance on the track.
There were bronze medals for Ross Franks in the 1500m, Hamed Agboke in the 400m and Jenny Steinitz in the senior women’s long jump. Jenny was also fourth in the 100m hurdles. Teenage sprinter Emmanuel Adetu edged out Efe Peters to take the bronze medal in the U15 Boys 100m final. Peters, who was the second fastest qualifier, winning his heat in 12.24, finished fourth in the final in 12.08. In the 200m, however, Peters took bronze with Adetu in sixth place. The Club's youngest sprinter in action, Shawn Bell, also raced to a bronze medal in the U13 Boys 100m.
Sean Hall, the 2017 800m champion, in his first race for two seasons following injury, just missed out on a medal, finishing fourth, and there were fourth places, too, for Jaleel Roper in the U17 Men's 200m, Dhanisha Banee in the U17 Women's 200m (she was also sixth in the 100m), Leah Syme in the U17 women’s high jump, Sam Hitchings in the senior men's hammer, and Celeste Jore Minkwe in the U13 Girls long jump.
Georgie Clarke was fifth in the U17 women’s 1500m final and Rebekah Riches and Selma Hegvold were fifth and sixth in the under 17 800m.
Full Results
Meanwhile, in Yokohama, Japan, Dwayne Cowan (below), Britain’s second fastest 400m runner in 2019, ran the second leg for the team which finished fifth in the IAAF World Relay Championships, to clinch an automatic place in the Doha line-up.
In a busy run-up to the County Championships, HW teams were competing in the Rosenheim League (see photograph below) on Wednesday (May 8), the Ebbisham Boys League (Sunday May 5th), the Vets League on Monday 29 April and and the Youth Development League on 27 April.
