2:51pm Thursday 11th June 2009
By Andy McAllister
Defending Division One champions Blackburn Harriers have advanced to the top of the league after a resounding win in the second round of the Northern Track and Field League.
On the same weekend 12 months ago, a Harriers victory on home territory set them up for ultimate success, and the expectations are high once more after an accomplished team performance at Witton Park last Saturday.
Club officials were always bullish about their prospects, but the athletes still needed to step up to the plate and they did so with 14 ‘A’ and nine ‘B’ string wins, which included doubles in six events.
Sprinter Luke Evans, 18, was the star man with personal bests and maximum points in the 100m and 200m.
His times of 10.7 and 21.7 seconds gave him a combined impr-ovement of three tenths, and in the shorter race he was only five hundredths short of the fastest time in the country this year by an under 20.
Paul Bradshaw is another in the middle of a purple patch. During the week, the 21-year-old student set a personal best 1:48.14 for the 800m in the St Mary’s Classic meeting at Twickenham to rise to seventh in the rankings, but back home he stepped down to slice two tenths off his 400m time, a winning 48.5 seconds.
With such sprinting talent at their disposal, the relays were always a likely source of points and so it proved with narrow wins for both men’s teams as Evans combined with Claude Peter-Thomas, Jerome Duxbury and Jamie Vickery in the 4x100m, and Bradshaw linked with Michael Carr, Chris Matthews and Anthony Hauserman to take the 4x400m.
Ben Fish has been a most reliable source of points over the years, and he added to the tally by winning the ‘A’ string 3000m steeplechase in 9:55.0, the ‘A’ 5000m in 15:09.9 and even the ‘B’ 800m. Liam Monaghan took the high hurdles in 16.4 seconds, but the men’s Achilles heel was in the field events where Lewis Taylor and Stuart Maxwell were their only winners with a double in the hammer.
There were no such worries for the women where Carmen Peter-Thomas and Abby Edmundson completed the double in the triple jump with respective distances of 11.11m and 10.54m. The hammer yielded another maximum for Sophie Hitchon and Sarah Henton, with Sophie again knocking on the door of the league record of 61.00m with 60.33m.
Henton came into her own in the discus winning with more than eight metres to spare with 44.41m, and the phenomenal Hitchon once again confirmed her credentials as the fastest hammer thrower in the country with a winning 25.2 seconds in the 200m.
Maybe the best news of the day for Blackburn though was the return after injury of Alison Leonard, who won the 1500m with half a minute to spare.
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