Herne Hill Harriers ladies team followed up second place in last weekend’s Surrey Road Relays with an exciting win at the Will Bolton cross country relays at West Wickham over the 4 x 4km stages. Harriers’ ladies A team led from the start for the second week in a row again courtesy of a fast opening leg run by Katie Snowden, whose 14.40 around the undulating loop was fastest female run of the day 15 seconds ahead of GB junior cross international Sabrina Sinha. With excellent second and third stages run by veteran Nikki Sturzaker (16.38) and under 17 Ella Newton (15.57) we were still in front when Steph Mitchell took over on our anchor leg and although chased very hard she prevailed by 6 seconds, her 16.57 clocking being far less relevant than crossing the line first.
Not to be outdone by their older club mates, Herne Hill young athlete teams cruised to a clean sweep of team victories. Mohamed Mohamud, Ben Harris and Mohammed Ali were first across the line in the U15 boys race, Jacob Alley, Jacob Harrison and Jaden Kennedy won the U13 boys category, Katie Balme, Lily Newton and Eimar Griffin the U15 girls relay and Jessica Tabraham, Lyla Willkinson and Rosie Hammond were U13 girls winners. Mohamud ran the second fastest overall time in the youngster’s race with Newton running the fastest girls time with only three boys in the race clocking quicker times.
The club’s senior men’s A team placed 5th with new U17 member Laurie Pope setting us off with a good first leg (14.18), followed by a returning Chris Busaileh (13.47) then Mohammed Ismail (13.41) and Jeff Cunningham (14.03) completed our team. Our ladies B team were 6th all female team and our men’s B team placed 12th overall.