Young Chichester athletes run for Sussex – and Ned smashes club 10k record

Over a frosty course at Oxford, a dozen counties from the South East sent strong teams with Surrey and Essex in particular showing great strength which will rank them in the top half dozen counties nationally over the season.

In such company, all three Chichester athletes performed with credit with two scoring in the four-to-score Sussex teams.

Elodie Hill had the best finishing position of the day in 25th which gave Sussex well deserved bronze medals in the under-13 age group with 45 points, just five behind silver medallists Essex and way in front of south coast rivals Hampshire.

Molly Smithers brought home the Sussex quartet in the under-15 girls’ race in 36th position with the four Sussex scorers separated by less than 20 seconds at the end of their 4k course.

They were narrowly squeezed into seventh place in the team rankings with just a handful of points separating them from bronze.

Ben Ward was in the middle of a large pack to finish 96th in the under-15 boys’ race, one of the lost competitive of the day.

The next target for Chichester’s cross country runners will be the county championships on Saturday, January 7 at Bexhill, where places for the National Inter-Counties at Loughborough in March will be up for grabs as well as individual and team medals.

10k RECORD

Chichster ace Ned Potter has smashed his own 10k personal best at Telford – and the all-time Chichester Runners club record.

Lining up in one of the strongest 10k fields of the whole of 2022, with no fewer than 30 runners breaking the coveted 30-minute barrier, Potter came home in a time of 29min 13sec - to take 33 seconds from the previous club record set by Chris Zablocki at 29.46.

Potter’s seventh place at Telford was less than 20 seconds behind the winner and resulted in him claiming several notable scalps, including this year’s Chichester 10k winner, Josh Grace of Aldershot, who was a couple of places back in ninth in a speedy 29.16.

Potter’s recent run in the European Cross Country trials at Liverpool was just outside selection for the European Championships held near Turin on Sunday.

But Sunday’s 10k made up for the disappointment of missing out on a GB vest.

The Chichester man can look forward with relish to the Sussex cross country championships on Saturday, January 7 – but knows he will not have things all his own way by any means as another couple of Sussex under-23s are also in fine form.

Brighton’s Tomer Tarragano claimed the final GB spot in the under-23 team in Italy while Horsham’s Jacob Cann edged out Potter at Liverpool but was a few seconds adrift at Telford.

Junior Sportshall League

Despite last-minute withdrawals through illness, a squad of 11 Chichester Runners athletes travelled to Worthing on Sunday for round two of the Sussex Sportshall League.

The best individual performances cane from the older under-13s and under- 15s while the largest contingent numerically came from the under-11 s.

In a repeat of their success in match one, it was Max Gayle and Ben Stewart who led the way in the under-13 age group where Stewart completed an impressive long jump and triple jump double with a standing long jump of over 2. 40m, one of the stand out performances from any club in the whole afternoon.

Gayle was impressive with a blistering speed bounce total of 80 in the 30 seconds permitted. The pair then had a convincing win in the paarlauf as they had done in match one.

Sprinters Thomas Kelson and Isla Pearson produced all-round displays in jumps and track events before joining Gayle and Stewart to win the relay with a mixed team.

In the under-15 age group, Stanley Wilkes and Sam Wyatt have shown good cross country form already this winter and turned their hand to the shorter format of sportshall athletics to good effect in both track and field events.

All the under-11 squad are enjoying their first competitive season with the club and much promise was shown by Ella Franklin, Katie Bates and Leilani Stott in the girls’ squad. The boys had a good quartet on show – Alfie Luxford, Fletcher Hall, Jack Ford and Jasper Robertson.