Herne Hill Harriers round-up: Katie Snowden smashes her 800m PB and sets new club record

Katie Snowden followed up her superb fourth place in the European Championship women’s 1,500m final in Munich by smashing her 800m PB and breaking two minutes for the first time, writes Geoff Jerwood.

The 28-year-old Herne Hill Harrier ran 1:59.72 to defeat Angelika Sarna with a strong finish in Szczecin, Poland last week.

This was a landmark performance to go under the two minutes barrier, having run 2:01 or 2:00 for the past eight seasons, apart from her injury ravaged 2019.

Snowden become the 29th British woman to go sub-two minutes and the first female from Herne Hill Harriers to do so. She set a new club women’s 800m record and also a World Championship qualifying time for Budapest 2023.

Although Snowden has moved up to fourth in the UK women’s 800m rankings for 2022, she still regards 1,500m as her main event.

She travelled to Lucerne to place fifth of 14 on Tuesday in a world class 1,500m field. Poor weather conditions – cold with torrential rain shortly before the race – quite literally put a dampener on anticipated fast times, but Snowden claimed some good scalps of faster women on paper and ran closer to her PB than the majority of the field with her 4:06.72 in a race won in 4:04.94.

Two Herne Hill Harriers brought home medals from the England Athletics U15 and U17 Championships at Bedford over the weekend.

Fred Hake won silver in the U15B 300m (36.94) and Ella Rennie took bronze in the U15G 200m in a PB of 25.49.

Hake was close to his PB while Rennie’s new best time was into a headwind of -1.4 metres per second. She was also sixth in the U15G 100m the day before (12.68) after a 12.59 clocking in her semi-final.

Other Herne Hill finalists at Bedford were Alexander Abebrese (fifth in the U17M shot with 13.21m), Lucy Wright (seventh in the U15G 800m in 2:20.30) and Lily-Rose Brown (eighth in the U15G 300m in 44.00).

Wright had run 2:15.59 the previous day and had clocked a very good PB of 2:13.52 at the recent Tooting Bec BMC meeting. Brown won her heat on Saturday in 39.84.

The Herne Hill girls team won the Lily B Plate final at Sutton with a convincing victory despite having many absentees due to family holidays or being at the National U15/17 Championships.

This season has been difficult as the Tooting Bec track was closed for more than three months for resurfacing, meaning recruitment and development has been lower than usual years especially on the back of the previous Covid restrictions. This has picked up well since the track has reopened in early July.

Many newcomers took part in their first ever competitions and performed very well to cover as many events as possible to make key contributions to a win by more than 70 points from the host club Sutton & District.

There were triple wins from U13 Jasmine Nkoso in the sprint hurdles, high jump and shot and a double win from Rosalie Laban in the U17 80m hurdles and 300m hurdles.

The outstanding individual performance came from Victoria Alicante King in the U17 womens shot with 12.80m.

Daniel Shaw won the C 800m in a big PB of 1:56.37, with Mike Cummings second in a season’s best 1:57.00.

In the mile Brandon Dewar ran an excellent 4:13.27 to place eighth in the sub four minutes race, clocking a 1,500m split of 3:56.86. Georgie Grgec was third in a good quality women’s mile race with a PB 4:41.52, her 1,500m split of 4:22.09 also being a PB.

In the B mile Joe Elliott was fourth in 4:41.49, with a 1,500m of 4:23.66. Ross Brown was ninth in 4:45.62 and 4:27.19 and Seve Loudon 10th in 4:47.25 and 4:26.72. In the A 5,000m race Sam Bramwell ducked under 15 minutes with 14:59.95 for third place. George Withers was tenth in a PB 15:56.33 and Jeff Cunningham 14th in 16:25.92.

In the B 5,000m Ronan Tanguy was fourth in 16:42.91, George Melville fifth in 16:50.63 and Jenny Nandi ninth in 18:48.93 who also ran good PBs.