Welsh Indoor Championships – NIAC Cardiff – and other Results.
A fine 400m debut for Oliver Biddle at the EIS Arena at Sheffield resulted in a good solid opener to the season with a time of 49.18s last week.
At Cardiff we had the Welsh Open Championships and without a volume of B&W competitors we still had medal performances.
Outstanding was the 800m Final run of Katy Roy with a PB of 2:18.81 and a silver medal to boot. Katy ran a good steady heat to come second in 2:25.09 and easily qualify for the Final. In the final our outstanding V35 ‘Masters’ athlete settled into a sensible pace with 200m splits of 32.9, 67.5 then 1:43.3 before changing gear on the last lap to run down the second placed athlete and complete her silver medal run with that Indoor PB of 2:18.81. Katy was absolutely elated with her run and celebrated on the award rostrum with her two young daughters beside her. What a finish – well done Katy. Also, from that delightful and dedicated Dave Taylor training group Danni Sinclair improved her Indoor personal best to 2:25.38 in her heat to also qualify for that final. Danni then found the pace quite tough and sadly stepped off the track with a lap to go. Super Vet V65 Dave Bedwell was seeded in a tough qualifying race in the Men’s event so ran sensibly at the back but still produced a Club V65 Record of 2:28.31.
The Men’s 200m also saw B&W come away with a medal and top performances from Isaac Marsh and young U17 Mackenzie Ritson. Isaac breezed through his heat to win in 22.76 secs and qualified for the ‘A’ Final. Mac let the leader build up a good advantage in his heat before storming the last 80 metres to win on the line in 23.53 secs to qualify for the ‘B’ final. Isaac has already run 22.09 the year at Sheffield so there were high hopes for him in these Welsh Champs and he set off in the outside lane with intention. However, he relaxed slightly in the back straight and passed the advantage to the following two competitors. Fired by this Isaac changed gear and went in fierce pursuit first taking second place but just failing to make first on the line in a notable 22.26 secs to take the silver medal. Mackenzie looked very mature in his ‘B’ final and came again off the final bend to take first place with a big-time improvement to a new U17 Club Indoor Record of 23.22 secs.
Edward Wilson fresh from his PB of last week led out 60m sprinters and was a clear winner of his heat in another creditable time 6.99 secs to be our only qualifier for the ‘A’ Final. Ed found the final tough with second to sixth all being cover by 8/100ths of a second and Ed just slipping by 1/100th of a second to 7.00 secs but in 6th place. Still a really good run Ed – well done. Isaac Marsh ran 7.14 in his heat to qualify for the ‘B’ final where he upped his game magnificently just be pipped into second place with 7.06 clocking. Coach Tristan Jamieson was a shade slower than last week with 7.50 secs and Yusef Hussein showed advancement with 7.75 secs.
Ester Leong had moved her Indoor PB up the 3.81m in the Pole Vault but faded to 3.66m this week to take fourth behind a fine performance of International Jade Ive who won with a classy 4.26m.
Jedani Wright in the Men’s Triple Jump who has been bugged with injury since settling into studies at Cardiff Met University quit the event after two run-throughs with hamstring trouble.
Samantha Barrett fresh from 11m jumping last week had to settle for a 10.84 clearance in the Triple Jump in fourth place.
Higher competition athletes showed well with Delleah Belgrave coming seventh in the Women’s Long Jump with a 5.62m clearance on her first Jump and Charlie Husbands cleared 1.98m in the High Jump to take an equal first place.
Mike Strange
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