Herne Hill Harriers' athletes delivered an audacious medal heist in the heart of Metropolitan League territory.
Sophie Tooley followed up her superb relay leg at the National Cross Country Relay Championships last weekend where she took us into an unassailable lead, with a clear victory in the Women's race at Parliament Hill, the home of cross country running. Sophie is a class cross country runner, with performances including 12th in last year's Inter Counties, and here she bided her time before taking off on the second lap to secure a comfortable victory. Sophie led the team to 4th team, just outside a podium position, with Helena Keenan having another brilliant run in 8th and a cool 5 minutes quicker here than her 2023 performance here. Other scorers were Nikki Sturzaker 31st and Chloe Wright 45th, and there were seven further HHH finishers.
The Men won a close fought team battle against Met League Clubs London Heathside and Highgate Harriers, with 60 points vs 65 and 65 respectively. Ollie Mills produced one of his best cross country performances yet to finish in 6th place, just fifteen seconds outside the medals. This team victory was about packing, with our four men closing before any other team. Ioan Jenkins was an excellent 11th, excelling on a course that is very much to his liking, and was brilliantly backed up by Joseph Grehan-Bradley in 20th and Ben Palmer 23rd. Twelve other HHH men contested the event.
Prior to the London Championships there were the London Youth Games, in which athletes compete for their boroughs. James Clements-Nash continued his excellent run of form which included fourth quickest leg last weekend in our winning National Cross Country Relay team, with a 2nd place finish here. This was a high quality sharp end, with James just losing out to a top U18 rival, but beating the English Schools 3000m IB winner.
There were around forty HHH athletes in total contesting the London Youth Games, with an incredible ten Girls in the U16 race. Three of our athletes finished in the top 10, with Skyla O'Brien 2nd, Marie Scriven finishing 4th and Isobel McLennan in 10th.
Josh Lotter has been one of the top HHH young athletes this winter, and had an excellent win in the U14 Boys race, with Tommy Howard in 11th, and two other HHH finishers. We had 7 U16 Boys, led home by Ted Jones in 5th position.
In the U12G we had four girls racing, with Daisy Lee finishing 9th, whilst in the U12 boys race we had 11 athletes, with Iggy Scibor-Kaminski finishing 3rd and Manuel Fisac-Gazze 9th. We had three U14 girls, with Emily James finishing 11th and in the U18W race there were 4 HHH athletes with Annabel Wainwright finishing 7th.