Northern Athletics Track & Field Championships
Sport City, Manchester – Saturday 13th/Sunday14th June 2015
Senior Athletes
A number of our senior athletes made the journey over the Pennines last weekend to compete in the Northern Championships, which were being held at Sport City, in Manchester.
The big winners of the weekend were the ‘Hull Hammer Squad’ who travelled over in strength and brought three gold medals and a silver medal back home with them.
Our senior sprinters reached two finals and acquitted themselves with distinction.
We also saw two of our long jumpers competing in the final of that event.
James Bedford put out a season’s best throw of 66.57m to take the gold medal in the men’s hammer final, just ahead of his training partner, Olympic finalist and Commonwealth silver medallist Alex Smith whose throw of 66.25m, gave him the silver medal.
Abbi Carter missed the entire 2014 season through injury. She went through a gruelling winter training schedule and entered the 2015 season fit and raring to go. She won the Hammer gold at the Humberside Championships in May and added the Northern Hammer title to it at Manchester, with a throw of 60.00m.
The third Northern Hammer gold was won by Maggie Okul in the under 20’s, when she made the second defence of the title she first won in 2013.
Luke Giblin, Kingston’s number one male sprinter, qualified for the final of the 200 metres race, where his run of 21.85s gave him a 5th place finish.
Meagan Hoult is the clubs number one female senior sprinter and she came through the heats and ran in the final of the 100 metres, where she clocked a time of 12.11s, for a 6th place finish. Megan had run a heat in 12.07s.
Gideon Okoh ran in the heats of the 100 metres where he recorded a time of 11.42s
Veteran athlete John Twiddle saw action in the finals of the shot and the hammer competitions.
In the hammer he was joined in the throwing circle by his fellow ‘Hull Hammer Squad’ members James Bedford and Alex Smith. John threw a distance of 40.32m, to finish in 10th place.
The shot putt saw John finish in 7th position with a throw of 12.30m.
In the Long Jump final our representatives were Matthew Elvidge and James Wardle. Neither of them experienced the best of days but Matt put in a season’s best jump of 5.95m.
