Indoor News

The indoor season continued for Woodford athletes, with the England Age Group Championships in Birmingham and the BUCS Championship sat Sheffield. Performances from Birmingham were led by a gold medal from Matt McLaughlin and a silver for Youcef Zatat, and from Sheffield a gold from Tom Phillips and a silver for Alex Cornwell.

Matt Mclaughlin who has enjoyed such a significant breakthrough over 1500m this indoor season, stepped down to 800m for the England U/20 Championships, and showed great form as he won with 1m50.59 secs. In the U/20 shot, Youcef Zatat made a big improvement to his personal best with a distance of 17.20m to take silver. Joseph Dewar progressed through to the U/20 60m final where he placed 7th with 7.02 secs, having qualified from his semi-final with 6.90 secs. Hoping to feature in the long jump medals, Joseph sadly had three no-jumps. Another in action was Ellie Savva who reached 4.74m in the U/17 long jump.

Tom Phillips' gold medal from Sheffield came over 1500m where he recorded 3m56.75 secs, and Alex Cornwell's silver was over 3000m losing out in a tight finish to James Thie with 8m40.24 secs, having recorded 8m22.92 secs in his heat. in the 400m, Mike Baker placed 4th with an indoor personal best of 49.06 secs, whilst Paul Scanlan went out in the semis with 50.36 after a 50.19 secs heat.. In the 200m Omolulu Abiodun, unlucky to find himself drawn in the inside lane after qualifying third fastest from his semi with 21.90 secs, placed 5th in the final with 22.24 secs. The previous day he had just missed out on making it through to the 60m final having placed 2nd in his semi with 7.00 secs. In the 60m heats Savion Williams recorded 7.32 secs.The women's 1500m saw Emily Moss 8th with 4m40.77 secs, marginally slower than her heat of 4m40.66 secs. Also 8th was Peter Karibo in the triple jump with 14.25m. HCA memebers in action included Moe Saegbon who won the high jump with 1.75m and Daniel Gardener who was 3rd in the pole vault with 4.70m.

There was also news from the US, where Sam Watts raced over 200m and was a little below his recent good form clocking 21.62 secs, and reporting finding it tough from lane two on an unbanked track, having recording 21.39 secs to qualify for the final.

During the week at the Lee Valley middle distance Open Meeting, Megan Edwards raced over 1500m and recorded 4m46.31 secs, whilst over 800m U/17 Perry Ronan recorded 2m05.16 secs and U/15 Kyle Lundie 2m28.80 secs