England Athletics & Northern Athletics Indoor Combined Events Championships

EIS Sheffield, Saturday 11^th March 2017

The curtain came down on a highly successful indoor season for local athletes when England Athletics & Northern Athletics jointly staged their Combined Events Championships at Sheffield’s English Institute of Sport. Kingston upon Hull’s Venus Morgan took the opportunity to produce a lifetime best performance and win the Northern title after a fascinating day’s competition. Such was the quality of her performance that she also finished 6^th in the England Athletics National Championship event which attracted a record field of 49 athletes in the under 17 age group.

Venus began her campaign with an outstanding run in her best event, the 60m hurdles. Her time of 8.93 sec was only 0.01 sec outside her best and amassed 925 points on the pentathlon table, placing her equal 2^nd overall and in the lead in the Northern Championship. A high jump of 1.55m (678 points) wasn’t sufficient to hold this position and she slipped down to 8^th overall and 2^nd Northern, having been overtaken in the latter by Laura Hickey (Leigh Harriers). The third event saw Venus produce an outstanding new personal best of 11.10m in the shot, going over the 11m barrier for the first time and adding 602 points to her total score. This took her back into the lead in the Northern event and placed her 5^th overall. It was all change again after the fourth event, the long jump, where Venus managed to overcome run-up problems to record a final round effort of 5.01m (562 points). However, her Lancastrian rival produced a huge personal best to put herself back in pole position for the Northern title while Venus slipped back 2 places to 7^th overall.

The 800m is the event most combined eventers look forward to least but it can often have a major bearing on the overall result. Such was the case in Sheffield where Venus knew that she had to finish almost 4 seconds ahead of the current leader to take the title. The girls were drawn together in the final heat and for good measure ended up sharing a line for the staggered start. However this was the last time they were in touching distance as Venus imposed herself on the race on the first of the 4 laps before running away from her rival to finish over 10 seconds clear. Her time of 2 min 34.48 sec added a hard-earned 638 points to her score, giving a final total of 3,405 – over 200 more than her previous best. This also placed Venus 6^th in the England Athletics Championship which was won in spectacular style by Pippa Earley (Kingston upon Thames & Polytechnic Harriers) who smashed the British record with a phenomenal score of 3,952 points. This was the second national record of the winter for the talented all-rounder adding to her 60m hurdles performance earlier in the winter.

Such is the strength of British combined eventing at present that new championship records were established in all 4 age group events staged in Sheffield a feat never before achieved in the long history of the championships. Heptathlons and Decathlons beckon as the summer season approaches with most of the athletes who graced the EIS now looking towards the England Athletics  Championships at Sport City, Manchester in August and the English Schools Championships in Boston in September to further enhance their status among the countries’ best all round athletes.