Further T & F News

There have been some encouraging early outdoor season performances from Woodford athletes, notably by those currently studying in the more performance friendly climate of the U.S. Recent personal bests have been recorded by Ed Shepherd, Holly Pattie-Belleli and Cindi Ofili.

Ed Shepherd currently based in California at San Francisco University added to his 3000m personal best from the indoor season with recent personal bests over both 1500m and 5000m. Over 1500m late in March Ed recorded 3m49.10 secs in Sacramento, and in early April improved again to 3m47.5 secs1 in Palo Alto. This weekend at the high profile Mt Sac Relays Ed placed 3rd in his 5000m race recording another personal best of 14m23.39 secs. Multi-eventer Holly Pattie-Belleli raced this weekend at the Tom Botts Invitational at Columbia Missouri. Holly who is based at Missouri State University, recorded windy marks over 200m of 24.08 secs (+3.7), 100mH 13.31 secs (+2.5), and LJ of 5.67 (+2.9), where her best legal effort was 5.61m (+1.7) Holly also reached 24.65m in the Javelin. The previous weekend at the Gibson International Holly recorded two personal bests; over 100mH with 13.84 secs (+0.5), and in her first 400mH race for 5 years where she recorded 61.01 secs. At the end of March in Fayetteville Holly placed 3rd in the heptathlon with 4803 points.

Cindi Ofili, who as her sister Tiffany Porter did is studying at Michigan State University and also raced at Mt Sac where she won over 100mH, in a time of 12.66 secs (+2.0) just 0.06 secs outside her personal best, and currently 2nd on this year's world rankings. Earlier in the month at Durham, North Carolina, Cindi recorded a personal best over 200m of 23.46 secs (+0.1), and also raced over 100m where she recorded 11.66 secs (+0.9). In Tallahassee Florida, Ezekiel Ewolu opened his outdoor season placing 2nd in the LJ with 7.49m (-0.1), and in Nassau Bahamas at the Chris Brown Invitational, Tosin Oke was 5th in the TJ with 16.40m. 

Closer to home and in far less friendly weather conditions, at last weekend's Lee Valley Open meeting, 800m specialists Daniel Rowden and Canaan Solomon raced over 400m. Daniel recorded 49.09 secs, and there was a personal best for Canaan with 48.52 secs. Tom Finch also raced and recorded 63.64 secs.

At Sunday's LICC meeting and in a welcome return to competition for the first time since 2013, former British number one Emeka Udechuku led a clean sweep in the discus at Lee Valley on Sunday. His winning distance of 52.38m beat Woodford team-mates Chris Linque (46.41m) and Devon Douglas (45.23m)