

Herne Hill Harriers’ top ranked Under 15 multi events athlete Jasmine Nkoso faced the challenge of six events over two days last weekend at the England Athletics U15/U17 Combined Events Championships at Eton. Instead of the more usually contested five events pentathlon for her age group, this one was a hextathlon with the addition of the javelin on the first day to the regular 75m hurdles, long jump, high jump, shot and 800m.
The talented Streatham based 14-year-old has enjoyed a stellar year which sees her at the top of the UK U15G rankings for the shot, the indoor pentathlon, the outdoor pentathlon and now the hextathlon, as she added this latest national title to her ever growing medals collection.
A day one combination of 75m hurdles in 12.13, long jump in 5.09m and javelin in a PB of 35.43m saw her placed a close second only 27 points behind a Welsh athlete going into the second day. A Scottish rival then leapfrogged the overnight first three in the high jump to now make it a three or four way battle with two events remaining.
Nkoso then took the lead with 12.59m in her strongest event the shot, but with one event remaining it was looking very close to call as her closest challenger from Scotland has a faster 800m performance than Nkoso. The latter would need to minimise the damage to stay in front at the end of the proceedings and this she did with a PB of 2:30.94.
Whilst the Scot Elliot produced 2:23.85, the Herne Hill athlete prevailed to and another national gold medal to her athlete profile. Nkoso scored a total of 3,084 points to Elliot’s 3,785 in a very well fought out contest. “It’s been a hard two days all my work has finally paid off,” a very happy Nkoso concluded.
In overseas action at the World Masters Championship in Gothenburg, super veteran Allan Long won silver in the M80 100m with a season’s best of 15.34 seconds. Long is entered for the M80 200m later in the week with hopes of another world championship medal.
A younger masters sprinter Byron Robinson was part of a gold medal winning Great Britain M35 4 x 100m relay team who clocked 42.35. He also placed fifth in the 100m final in 11.11 after clocking 10.98 in the semifinals. His season’s best 100m time of 10.95 last month set a new Harriers club M35 100m record. Unfortunately in the 200m he was disqualified in the heats for touching the inside line too many times.
The final Southern Athletics League match of this season resulted in a very close second team placing at Carshalton when a win was needed to gain promotion.
U20 Diego Lister was the only winner in the men’s events as he took the 400m hurdles in 64.60. The U17 women in the team are clearly good for this senior league as Lily-Rose Brown and I’sha Barletey claimed an A and B string 100m and 200m double. Brown clocked 12.75 and 25.28 and Barletey 13.13 and 26.8.
The women’s 4 x 100m relay team also won their race. There were more U17 winners as Maeve Minielly won the A 1500m steeplechase with 5:48.87, whilst in the field events there was another A string win courtesy of Tailiah Fleary in the shot with 7.83m.
In the RunThrough road races in Battersea Park on Saturday morning Jenny Nandi was third female overall in the 10km with a chip time of 36:36, a PB by almost a minute. In the 5km race Rory Christmas also enjoyed a PB breakthrough as he clocked 15:56 for his first sub 16 minutes time in sixth place.