Silver was the colour for the medalists from Herne Hill Harriers at South of England cross country championship at Parliament Hill on Saturday 26th January, with an individual 2nd place for Phoebe Anderson in the under 17 women’s race and under 20 women’s team medals.
Individually the best placed Harriers runner was Wayne Vinton coached athlete Phoebe Anderson who was a fabulous 2nd in the under 17 women’s race.
The Herne Hill under 20 women took home team silver medals in an age group that has such a high rate of attrition among club athletes. Ella Newton 17th, Zoe Tompkins 26th, Katie Balme 40th and Jemima Hayward-Bhika 49th formed our team.
Our next highest team position was for our 4th placed under 15 girls who went one better than our senior women in 5th. Stacey Ormerod led our seniors in 12th and hers was the second highest position of the day for a HHH athlete after Phoebe. The under 15 girls were led home by another strong run from Poppy Craig McFeely in 15th place.
Next senior women’s finisher after Stacey was Katie Moore from Northern Ireland, who is coached over there by HHH man Francis Marsh, racing well in 33rd place. Fiona de Mauny has been almost ever present at our XC races this winter and also raced well to finish 66th, with our scoring team being closed by Olivia Zeltner in 90th.
The men ran 15km and placed 14th team which was a good improvement relative to the Surrey champs, led home by in form Alex Hobley in 113th.
The remaining members of our 6 man scoring team were Jeff Cunningham 144th, Simon Coombes 156th, Jack Dickenson 169th, Andrew Grigg 214th and Angus Butler 236th, with plenty more in red and black vests following in the huge field of more than 1,000 runners.
Geoff Jerwood