Weekly Update - 13th Aug. 2025

England Athletics Age Group Championships, Birmingham (8th - 10th Aug.)

The standards at these championships are as high as ever and it was great to see Cambridge Harriers being a big part of this, reports Mick Bond, none more so than Kendrick Onolememen and Obinna Aniebo. Training partners and school friends at Dartford Grammar, they competed in the U15 boys discus. Obinna was first to throw and opened with a huge PB of 53.23m, which put him 4th on the UK All-Time-Rankings. Kendrick followed two minutes later with 53.30m to take the lead by 7cm.

Obinna tried to respond in the following rounds and got close in the 5th with 52.63m, but Kendrick produced a 53.56m in the same round and eventually taking the win will all six throws over 53 metres. Kendrick now sits 2nd on the all-time-list behind our own Curtis Griffith-Parker who threw 55.39m twenty years ago. All credit to John Hillier who has coached all three throwers.

In other field events Daniel Obike's clean card in the U17M high jump, where he cleared 1.98m on his first attempt meant he took gold. Michael Bridge, another member of the Hillier throws group, won silver in the U17M shot with 16.79m, and took 4th in the discus with a PB of 47.78m.

On the track there was success for our hurdlers with Elijah Olaleye, Tess Hepple, Nia Thomas and Hans Nmaju all making finals. Hans had to run the race of his life to take gold in the U17M 100m hurdles, pushing him to another club record and moving him to eighth on the all-time-list with 12.73s. Elijah took silver in the U17M 400m hurdles, but was disappointed with his run. Tess finished 4th in the 80m hurdles, taking England bronze, as one of the girls ahead of her was Scottish.

Emily Cadman probably had the toughest schedule of the weekend having to run three rounds of the 100 on Saturday followed by three 200’s on Sunday. On both days the electronic timing system had to go down to 1,000ths of  a second to decide her results and unfortunately being on the wrong side of the curser on the screen. She was rewarded with a huge 100m PB of 11.77s for silver, whilst her 24.32s 200m placed her 4th. Her 100m time puts her only 0.14 away from Daryll Neita's club record of 11.63s.

Other results: Immanuel Jegede 6^th in U17M 400m semi in 52.48s (52.19s in heat); Zavier Brathwaite 7th in U17M 100m semi 11.27s & 6th in 200m in 22.82s; Danielle Agyemang-Tolbert 4th in U17W 300m heat in PB 41.27s & 5th in 200m semi 25.68s; Meredith Cummins 9th in U17W 1500m steeple-chase in 5:37.57; Nia Thomas 8th in U17W 80m hurdles final in 11.87s (11.77 in heat).

(Photographs from England Athletics Twitter (X) feed)

BMC Grand Prix - World Athletics Challenger, Manchester (Sat. 9th Aug.)

Congratulations to Holly Dixon who broke the long standing senior women's 1500m club record in Manchester on Saturday. Joan Allison has held the record since 1974 at 4:10.66s. Holly clocked 4:10.56s taking the win in the Women's A Race.

Watford Harriers Open Graded Meeting (Wed. 6th Aug.)

Kyle Hurst clocked a 3000m personal best of 9:17.22s.