Weekly Update - 11th June 2025

BMC Grand Prix - World Athletics Challenger, Birmingham Uni. (Sat. 7th June)

Holly Dixon set another personal best over 1500m with a time of 4:12.98s at the BMC Grand Prix in Birmingham.

Harvel 5 (Sat. 7th June)

James Macdonald defended his Harvel 5 crown on Saturday and together with Mark Penny and Stephen Hodges took the team win.

SEAA U13/U15/U17 Championships, Crystal Palace (Sat. 7th & Sun. 8th June)

The decision to hold this event at Crystal Place proved to be a bit of a double edged sword for the organisers, reports Mick Bond. On the one hand they had a bumper entry of nearly 2000 juniors, but on the other hand the venue was a disaster! Crystal Palace is a shadow of its former self with the main stand condemned as unsafe and GLL who run the venue not really switched on to what is required for a major athletics event. The track had various patches on it, the last of which was only worked on in the week leading up to the event, and when someone walked through the still wet rubber surfacing the day before, the track was ruined and the outside three lanes on the home straight deemed unsafe. The track program on the Saturday started at 10am and finished 2.5 hours late at 9.30pm in the pouring rain!

On the Sunday, the organisers managed to move most events to use the back straight and someone how managed to run to time. Meanwhile the grass in the centre of the track was a foot long in places making decisions on where throws implements landed difficult to say the least.

Our athletes however performed well and came away with several medals and PB’s. Obinna Aniebo had the best weekend, winning the Under 15 boys hammer on Saturday with 44.67m and then taking bronze in both the shot and discus on Sunday (13.49m and 43.63m). In the discus he was out thrown by team mate Kendrick Onolememen who won with 47.16m. On the Saturday evening Daniel Obike won the Under 17 men’s high jump with a 1.89m clearance in the pouring rain.

On the track there were wins in the Under 17 sprint and long hurdles. Hans Nmaju took the former in a new club record of 13.13s in an event which had three Cambridge Harriers in the final, whilst in the 400 hurdles Elijah Olaleye took gold, also in a new club record of 53.01s. (Results)

Swansea Half-Marathon (Sun. 8th June)

Rose Baker represented England Masters at the Swansea half marathon where she finished 8th W60 in 1:39:50. The clubs other finisher was David Hunter (M55) - 1:42:59.