National cross relay silver for Herne Hill Harriers boys 

Some recent strong team performances from the Herne Hill Harriers under 15 boys have been slightly overshadowed by the stellar exploits of the senior women who have won national and area relay gold medals in the last month. But on Saturday at the National cross country relay championships in Mansfield the boys took centre stage as they delivered silver medals in an exciting race.

The team was always well positioned during their 3 x 2km relay around an undulating circuit that was good under foot. Caspian Holmes ensured a strong start, handing over at the end of the opening leg in fourth place, clocking 6:42 for his team’s fastest time. Leau Roch then moved through into second towards the end of the next stage with 6:59. Tommy Clerkin had a slender looking gap to defend in order to hold onto the silver podium place, but he did so superbly as his 6:51 saw him across the line seven seconds ahead of the bronze medal team.

The boys had previously won silver medals at the National road relay championships a month ago and followed that up with bronze medals at the South of England cross country relays a couple of weeks later, the second result being achieved without Holmes in the team. Their excellent effort in Mansfield underlines their progress and rounds off the early season relays going into the core cross country campaign. 

The senior women’s team originally had high hopes of another medal challenge of their own with the trio who had won the southern cross relays title, but unfortunately Darcie Hey succumbed to illness during the week and was unable to compete in Mansfield. Helena Keenan stepped in as a late replacement to ensure a team could still race and in the circumstances their ninth place in a strong national field was another very good result.

Lucy Jones had been running the final leg in the recent relay teams, but here she switched to lead her team out, quite literally as she took the “win” on the first of the 3km laps. Her time of 10:00 was the seventh fastest overall ahead of some current female internationals and her next big result as she now starts to make her mark on the domestic club racing scene.

Keenan was magnificent in holding onto a top ten position after being handed a perhaps unexpected lead to defend. Her time of 11:11 kept the team in a strong ninth position which was well maintained by Sophie Tooley with 10:20 on an anchor leg which featured a number of the fastest athletes in the overall race. On only one occasion has a Herne Hill senior women’s team ever finished higher.

The under 13 girls also achieved a top ten finish as Marnie Millar was 19th in 8:33, then Isabel Carter moved up a place with 8:43 before Skyla O’Brien went through to finish 10th with 8:13. 

As well as the silver medal trio, there were two other U15B teams representing Harriers as Arnold Duan (41st with 7:25), Zachary Morris (21st, 7:09) and Ed Cunniffe (7:28) combined to finish 18th and Noah Turner (53rd, 7:37), Herbert Clark (40th, 7:38) and James Clements-Nash (7:56) were 40th of 69 complete teams.

It was very encouraging to see two U20W teams from the club competing in an age group where participation often drops off and both ran well. The A team around a 2.5km lap was Kaitlin Hewitt (29th, 9:40), Hebe Hunter (26th, 10:23) and Izzy Perry (25th, 10:29). The B team comprised Rosalie Laban (44th, 11:29), Vivi Marshall (35th, 10:59) and Layla Ang (32nd, 10:41).

The U15G team were 31st with Sofia Mendes (36th, 8:21), India O’Brien (39th, 8:46) and Zoe Dodgson (31st, 8:43). The U13B team were 39th with Anton Thomas (48th, 8:29), Conor Harrow (37th, 8:41) and John Reynolds (39th, 8:55).

The U13G B team finished 44th, the senior men’s A team 54th and the B team 79th. Both the U17W and the U20M teams were unfortunately incomplete, albeit the latter was filled by a U17 who would otherwise have run in his own age group alone with nobody to hand over to. 

Geoff Jerwood