Sunday’s international athletics calendar featured the IAAF World Challenge Meeting in Berlin, a meeting at which Herne Hill Harriers revelation of the summer Kristal Awuah continued her fantastic season with an absolutely sensational run in the German capital.
Now 19 years old and already a double World Junior Championship bronze medallist in the 100m and 4 x 100m in Tampere, Finland earlier in the summer, Awuah’s latest performance saw her smash her personal best with an 11.16 (-0.1m/s) run to win the B 100m at a top senior meeting. This time elevates Awuah to third in the 2018 UK senior women’s 100m rankings.
Even more impressively, Awuah moves up to second on the all-time British junior (under 20) list and is only 0.02 of a second outside recent European senior champion Dina Asher-Smith’s British junior 100m record.
Last week the team to represent Europe in the upcoming IAAF Continental Cup next weekend in Ostrava was announced and Awuah’s latest revision to her own Herne Hill Harriers club senior and under 20 women’s record justifies her inclusion in the Europe 4 x 100m relay squad at this event, alongside Asher-Smith.
At club level there was some very good racing at the Ladywell 10,000m races organised by Kent AC on a warm Sunday afternoon. Five Harriers athletes completed their gruelling 25 laps of the track with some distinction.
Raj Paranandi had a superb run, following the pacemaker and then finding himself out in front. Over 40 Paranandi was ultimately chased down by one runner in the final couple of laps as he finished second in the fifth of the seven races of the day with a big PB of 34.09.14. Robin Jones clocked 35.45.59 in the same race, while in the other races Trevor Chilton ran 40.16.00 and Gav Newsum 37.48.56, both running track PBs for the distance and Jonathan Ratcliffe, completed an all veteran cast of finishers, clocking 37.06.01.
At the Woking AC Young Athletes Open Meeting, also on Sunday, Herne Hill athletes came away with two meeting records plus three silver medals and one bronze in what was a good weekend for our youngsters.
Dante Clarke followed up his big long jump PB at the Herne Hill Open eight days earlier with another leap that is clearly ahead of the rest of the UK under 13 boys rankings for this year as he was measured at 5.77m for a meeting record.
Lily-Rose Brown was another meeting best performer in the under 11 girls 600m, running a very fast time of 1 49.11 from her club colleague Lucy Wright’s 1.57.27. Brown’s time was quicker than the corresponding age boys race on the day and coincidentally her brother Jaden Kennedy set a meeting record for the under 13 boys 800m in 2:16.6 back in 2016.
Under 15 Harvey Kande is still very new to athletics, but after qualifying for the 800m final with a time of 2:27.88, he then two hours later went on to take gold in a new PB of 2:09.56. In the under 17 girls races Susannah Hirst also won a silver in the 1500m.
Geoff Jerwood
