England Athletics / Northern Athletics Combined Events Championships
International Stadium – Bedford, 26th & 27th May 2018
With the track & field season barely underway Britain’s best combined event athletes in the senior & under 20 age groups headed for Bedford International Stadium for the England Athletics Heptathlon & Decathlon Championships. Just one local athlete made the trip, Kingston upon Hull AC’s 16 year old Venus Morgan, taking on the under 20 event for the first time having just moved into the age group. With Northern Athletics staging their championships concurrently Venus had high hopes of bringing some reward back up the A1 after having taken the bronze medal in the Northern indoor under 20 pentathlon championship earlier in the year.
As usually happens at Bedford the athletes were greeted by a swirling wind which unfortunately spent most of the first day of competition blowing into their faces on the track and consequently slowing times in the sprint hurdles and 200m events. In spite of this Venus produced a lifetime best of 14.98 sec in the opening event, the 100m hurdles, the 4th fastest time of the day, collecting 844 points, Solid performance of 1.56m in the high jump (689 points) and 9.27m in the shot (482 points) followed and Venus then produced an outstanding season’s best of 26.04 seconds (794 points) in the 200m despite running into the strongest recorded headwind of the day. At the halfway stage this left Venus with a score of 2,809 points placing her 5th overall and 2nd in the Northern event.
Day 2 began with the long jump where Venus produced one of her best jumps to date with 5.57m (720 points) before launching the javelin 28.02m (439 points) – a new personal best. Still 5th overall but now down in 3rd place in the area championship Venus now faced the 800m knowing that yet another lifetime best would be required to give her any chance of moving up the leader board. With training having gone well recently Venus attacked the race from the gun and was rewarded with a time of 2:27.90 (719 points) – an improvement of over 3.5 seconds on her previous best time. Despite this she had to be satisfied with the Northern bronze medal with a total score of 4,687 points – a tantalising 20 points short of the silver medal winner 19 year old Molly Newton- OBrien (City of York AC / Cardiff University) with 18 year old Grace Bower (Sale Harriers – Manchester) taking the title with 5,283 points. Venus was delighted to take 5th place in the England Athletics Championship – her highest ever placing at national level with a new club record score. The outstanding winner of the title was Jade O’Dowda (Oxford City AC) – younger sister of Bristol City & Republic of Ireland footballer Callum – with a total of 5,610 points. Silver medal went to Bower with Emily Race (Worksop Harriers) taking bronze with 5,010 points.
The next heptathlon on Venus’s programme is in late June when she tackles the English Schools North Eastern Region event which should then lead to a place in the schools national final, again at Bedford, in September.
