Athletics: Hercules Wimbledon’s Charlie Wyllie makes British Athletics Championship debut
HERCULES WIMBLEDON
BY GEORGE MALLET
Hercules athletes continued to excel themselves these past two weeks as the 2024 track season continues in full force.
Charlie Wyllie last weekend (June 29) made his debut at the British Athletics Championships, the event which this year doubles up as the trials for the Olympic Games. An invite-only event it sees the top athletes in every discipline gather together over two days of action for a place on the plane to Paris.
Competing in heat two Wyllie finished a competitive 11th in 3:46.04. His race featured eight different sub-four-minute milers, with race winner George Mills going on to book his spot in Paris in the next day’s final.
Sprint specialist and former European U20 100m medalist Chad Miller competed over 200m. Miller ran 21.20s in heat 4, being unlucky not to progress to the semi-finals as he was edged out by one-hundredth of a second into fourth.
Eoin Brady continued his breakout summer by recording his first sub-15 minute clocking at the Tracksmith Twilight 5000m on Wednesday evening. Competing in the evening’s fastest race Brady was 21st in 14:58.99, a personal best by almost six seconds.
Adam Collins, making his 5000m debut bettered his fastest 5km (recorded on the road at the end of June) by 30 seconds to finish 11th in race four of eight in a time of 17:33.45.
Plenty of athletes were this weekend competing at the Surrey County Championships at Kingsmeadow stadium. On Saturday Freia Harper-Tee took silver over 3000m in the U15 girls, running at time of 10:47.95 to finish almost 15 seconds clear of the next competitor. Leah Paulson was fourth in 11:16.68.
In the same age group as the boys, Hercules secured a one-two finish thanks to impressive runs from Theo Creed (9:36.62) and Sam Dyson (9:46.01), respectively. James Fraser was sixth, with a fourth Hercules athlete in the top seven thanks to Harry Allen.
Moving up one age group Pancho Panchev took the U17 title, finishing three seconds clear in 9:35.77. Noah Fernandez joined him on the podium in third with a 9:39.53 clocking.
In the Senior Men, competing over 5000m, U20 Jack Hobden was an impressive second running 16:31.76.
In the Masters equivalent, held at the same venue, there were a number of individual golds. In the M85 category, for athletes over the age of 85, John Webster threw the javelin 16.84m to take the title. He also won the Hammer Throw in 22.53m, in the process coming fourth of all athletes over 60 and beating two athletes over 20 years younger than him.
Mark Andrews took both Triple Jump and High Jump gold in the M35 class, winning both events overall. He also took titles in the 110m Hurdles (21.92s) and the Discus Throw (31.28m). Four further silvers came in the Shot put, Hammer, Javelin and Weight throw in a no doubt tiring day for the Hercules athlete.
Stuart White took the M60 title over 400m in 66.64s, showing speed over 200m (28.57s) and 100m (14.35s) to take silvers in those events.
Special mention should also go to Kevin Snelling in the same age group who took silver in the Javelin (20.09m), Hammer (18.68m) and fourth in the discus (16.81m).
Picture: Mark Hookway
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