Katie Snowden won her heat, but no medal in the final of the 400m at the UK U20 Championship in the Bedford sunshine, but she did run faster than last year when she won this National title and indeed her fastest yet recorded in her young life to date. That she was only able to place 4th this year says much about the opposition, with the winner clocking a championship best performance and Northern Ireland U20 record, but Katie’s great new PB constitutes yet another record of her own, as she revised her HHH club senior and U20 women’s records down a tad to 54.51 seconds. Katie can be justifiably happy with this run, which demonstrates that her prowess over one lap is in very good order as she puts the finishing touches to her preparations for two laps in the World Youth Championship in Lille early next month, carrying into this big meeting the confidence that she should derive from the belief that very few of her rivals there will possess this sort of speed.
Julien Allwood also placed a good 4th in the U20 men’s triple jump in the last event of the two day meeting to be completed, falling only 7cm short of a medal with a best leap of 14.78m. The lead up to Julien’s competition here had been all about rehabilitation from an injury sustained back in mid May at the Surrey Championship. Although still clearly not 100%, jumping at this level will have been a very good boost to Julien’s medal aspirations at the coming weekend’s English Schools Championship at Gateshead. This was one of only two events in which HHH had two representatives and Shola John-Olojo’s 14.19m jump for 9th place was also decent, as was Jess Knight’s run in clocking her best outdoor 400m time to date in another heat of Katie’s event, which was not quite enough to squeeze her into a hot final.
With the high standard of entry there were not too many other HHH athletes present, but Paul Oluyemi showed improved consistency in placing 6th in the U23 men’s long jump with 7.26m as he continues to seek out that elusive huge leap many of us know is in there waiting to come out. Matthew Walcott was another returning from injury and did well to place 7th in the U23 men’s 110m hurdles, while Aisha Naibe-Wey continued her hurdling improvement over one lap with PBs of 65.04 in her U20 women’s 400m hurdles heat and then lowered this to 64.77 in placing 8th in her final. Tobi Adeyemi ran a season’s best of 49.02 in his semi final of the U23 men’s 400m, but did not advance to the final, as was the case with Jeffrey Ocrah despite a wind assisted 10.69 time in the semi final of the U23 men’s 100m.
Earlier in the week at Battersea Park the HHH men’s Rosenheim League team won our 3rd match of 4 so far to strengthen our position at the top of the Eastern Division with 2 fixtures to come, plus a final in August for which we must now have surely qualified.
Herne Hill’s boys team comfortably won their second Ebbisham league match at Walton to move clear at the top of the table and have a two point lead going into the final match next month. Showing great team spirit throughout the afternoon to cover all the events & with a host of Pbs the boys lead throughout the afternoon with the final scores Herne Hill Harriers 213, Sutton & District 169 Croydon 120 South London Harriers 111 Guildford 97 Epsom & Ewell 24.