Hercules Wimbledon AC round-up: Promotion hopes boosted after big win in Southern Athletics League

BY TOM POLLAK

Hercules Wimbledon boosted their chances of promotion with their best Southern Athletics League win of the season at Spectrum Leisure Centre, Guildford on Saturday.

They took the match by more than 100 points and saw off Bexley-based Cambridge Harriers, the only other unbeaten team in their division, to strengthen their position at the top of the table.

Despite missing some of their top athletes, who were competing in other meetings over the weekend, the club covered all 74 events, team manager Heather Jones getting a full squad out.

Hercules Wimbledon’s women, without all-rounder Jenny Steinitz, actually outscored the men by seven points mustering a total of 155 .

Over-50 supervet Lisa Thomas made a big contribution as she won the women’s 2,000m steeplechase A and 400m and 800m B races and taking second in the 400m hurdles A race.

Another veteran, former Scottish international Alison Murray, won the 110m hurdles, pole vault and long jump B events and was second in the high jump A with manager Jones winning the respective B events and taking second place in the 100m hurdles.

Jones finished third in the discus and javelin B and fourth in the hammer B.

Endurance runner Jonathan Cornish completed an exhausting 24 hours when he took the 1,500m and 5000m races after earlier finishing second in the 800m.

The previous night Cornish had posted a 5,000m PB of 14:43.48 competing in the FastFriday meeting organised by Orion Harriers at Walthamstow. He finished fifth out of the 16 runners .His run ranks him among the top 100 UK 5,000m runners this summer.

Teenager Hector Revill and David Lewin ensured maximum points in the 1,500m and 5,000m as they won both B races. James Meiklejohn won the 800m B race.

All-rounder Mark Andrews completed an exhausting one-day decathlon. He won the triple jump A and pole vault, hammer and javelin B events and took second place in the 110m and 400m hurdles A races and shot and discus B events. He completed his 10 individual events by taking third in the high jump A and long jump B.

The women track runners also did their stuff with Laure Komoe winning the 100m A, Emilie Bokor-Ingram and Camilla Perrson the 200m A and B races, teenager Rebekah Riches the 400m A race, marathon runner Claire Grima the 3,000m A race with fellow vet Gina Galbraith taking both the 3,000m and 1,500m B races and teenager Georgie Clarke the 1,500m A race. The quartet of Bokor-Ingram, Ann-Katherine Miekle, Riches and Clarke ended the day winning the 4x400m relay.

Other Hercules Wimbledon winners were Zachary Stapleton (100m A), Andrew Zarpong (long jump A), James Meiklejohn (400m B) Helen Davies (400m hurdles B), Camilla Persson (triple jump B) and Lance Power (110m hurdles B).

Two Hercules Wimbledon runners were in action in the British Milers Club Grand Prix meeting at Loughborough on Saturday. Charlie Eastaugh clocked a PB 3:54.59 in winning his race.

Fred Slemeck was third in his race in 3:57.29, half-a-second outside his lifetime best.

There were a host of Hercules Wimbledon runners in action in parkruns on Saturday.

Alex Binley made a winning debut in Cassiobury Park, Watfdord, taking the women’s race in 19:01 and finishing sixth overall out of 478 runners. Andrew Penney was the best of 19 Hercules Wimbledon runners on Wimbledon Common where he finished runner-up out of 532 runners in 15:47, four seconds behind the winner. Teenager Henry Silverstein chopped 33 seconds off his previous best in finishing fifth in 16:13, just ahead of club mate Finn Johnson, who also clocked a personal best of 16:25, improving on his previous fastest time, set a year earlier, by five seconds. Millie Thorpe was second in the women’s race.