Hercules Wimbledon AC round-up: Comfortable win in Southern League match in Carshalton

BY TOM POLLAK

Hercules Wimbledon’s women’s team dominated their events in the penultimate Southern Athletics League match at the David Weir Leisure Centre in Carshalton on Saturday.

The South London club’s squad ran out comfortable winners.

Victories by Ayoola Ajayi and Emilie Bokor-Ingram (400m A&B), Rebekah Riches and Selma Hegwvold (800m A&B), Alex Binley and Vikki Filsell (1,500m A&B) and Claire Grima and Binley (5,000m A&B) laid the foundations for the victory.

Team manager Heather Jones led from the front with a hat-trick of victories in the 100m and 400m hurdles, 1,500m steeplechase B race as well as picking up valuable points in the high jump, triple jump, shot, discus, hammer and javelin. 

Over-50 veteran Lisa Thomas won the steeplechase A race and Hercules also won the women’s 4x400m relay.

They gained maximum points in the men’s 400m hurdles through Finn Blakeney and Rowen Davies. 

Rob Tuer and Nicholas Thomas gained maximum points in the 3,000m steeplechase while over-55 veteran Dave Orchard won the pole vault, shot and hammer B.

Ben Taplin and Stuart Milton won the javelin A and B events.

Devonte Casely-Hayford won the 200m B race after Armani Thomas was second in the A race. 

Thomas and Casely-Hayford were also second in the 100m A&B races and Antonio Douglas and Dominic Bokor-Ingram were second in their respective 400m races. 

James Meiklejohn won the 800m B race and David Grima took the 3,000m B race.

Andrew Bullimore took the long jump A and triple jump B events. Teenager Morgan Sullivan won the triple jump A and was second in the long jump B. Hercules Wimbledon also took the men’s 4x400m relay.

There was heartbreak for 

Chad Miller in the IAAF World Junior Championships in Tampere, Finland, where he failed by just two hundredths of a second to make the 100m final after finishing third in his semi-final in 10.38 seconds. He had clocked a lifetime best of 10.33 in winning his heat, the third-fastest time of the 24 qualifiers.

His time was the fastest by a British junior this summer. 

Miller said: “It’s good to PB in the heats and it shows you that anything can happen when you’re ready. 

“If I didn’t think I was capable of what I’ve just done then I wouldn’t have come to Finland. I’m here to do what everyone else is here to do and that’s to win, but we’ll see who actually fulfils that.”

There was further disappointment for teenager Miller in the sprint relay where he ran a strong second leg to put the team in medal contention. Unfortunately, the anchor leg runner went too early and failed to receive the baton so the quartet failed to finish.

There was relay heartbreak too for Hercules Wimbledon’s Dwayne Cowan in the inaugural World Cup meeting at the London Stadium on Sunday. 

Cowan was due to run the second leg for the British team in the 4x400m relay, the final event of the two-day meeting. But the first leg runner pulled out with a hamstring injury and the team failed to start.

Eighteen Hercules Wimbledon runners were in action in the Wimbledon Common 5km parkrun on Saturday with veteran Gina Galbraith first woman in 19:11, just 12 seconds outside her personal best set a month earlier. She was 13th out of the 432 finishers. Adam Harwood was fourth in 17:31 with teenager Hector Revill seventh in 17:31.

Over-45 veteran Peter Collins was eighth in 18:39. Finn Johnson was runner-up on his debut appearance in the Liverpool event, where there were 340 finishers, in 16:43.