Hercules Wimbledon AC: Senior men complete hat-trick of cross country title wins
Hercules Wimbledon’s senior men completed a hat-trick of wins as they comfortably retained their Surrey cross country title at Denbies Vineyard, Dorking, on Sunday.
Ploughing through the muddy three-lap course, they got their scoring six runners across the line among the top 21 finishers, writes Tom Pollak.
Ben Toomer just missed out on an individual medal, finishing fourth of the 220 runners in the senior men’s race in 39:51.
Andrew Penney, competing in the Surrey championships for the first time since 2013, was 11th in 41:21. Surrey debutant Finn Johnson came 15th in 41:47 with Richard McDowell crossing the line in 17th place in 42:00.
Matt Sharp was 20th in 42:18 and the only member of last year’s winning Hercules team at Croydon to make this year’s scoring six.
Alex Robinson was 21st in 42:20.
Other leading Hercules runners outside the scoring six included Fred Slemeck (42:34), Will Russell (33rd, 43:42), Joe Clark (34th, 43:46) and Robbie Hynes (46th, 44:53). Twenty-one Hercules Wimbledon runners completed the senior men’s race.
The senior women finished fourth. Marathon runner Claire Grima finished eighth of the 113 runners – covering the 8km course in 31:38.
Alex Binley, who won the Wimbledon Common parkrun women’s event the previous day, was 20th in 33:15 – with further support coming from Eileen Brandley (22nd, 33:19) and Zoe Pike (28th, 34:34).
Johanna Tofte led the girls under-15 team to the bronze medals, finishing sixth out of 60 runners with Ellen Weir 10th, Georgina Clarke 11th and Rebekah Riches 32nd.
Zac Purnell led the men’s under-17 team to bronze as well, finishing 11th of the 49 competitors with Henry Silverstein 12th, Sam Barker 17th and Daniel Illis 42nd.
The under-13 girls came fourth. They were led home by Lauren Ermitage (10th) with Lulu Weisz (20th), Millie Thorpe (26th) and Millie Doyle (27th) completing the team.
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