Lucy Marshall lights up SAL 4
Woodford finished second in the fourth SAL of the season, the second consecutive home match. Despite beating previous league leaders Harlow, WGEL finished behind Victoria Park Harriers & Tower Hamlets, which leaves promotion out of reach. The strength in depth of the VPTH women's team made the difference in a match where the two clubs shared most of the victories.
The undoubted highlight of the fixture was a new league record and PB from Lucy Marshall in the women’s hammer. Her 62.12 places Lucy in the all-time top-20 UK throwers and was backed up with 61.34 earlier in the competition which in itself was a PB by almost a metre. Lucy also won the DT, in 30.68, just short of her best set less than a week ago in the UKWAL, and the shot in 11.21. Peter Clarke also shone in the men’s hammer. His man of the match performance of 57.56 was his longest throw in five years and his second best ever.
Photos (by Alex Wardle)
It was the third successive fixture where WGEL throwers won all the A string events. Eike Vardja just prevailed in 29.19, her 7th A string javelin in the last 9 SAL matches, and also won the B string shot. The strongest competition came in the Mens javelin, where James Bongart prevailed in 54.99, with Jay Boddington (above) taking B in a SB of 52.70 despite tricky wind conditions. Also throwing was Paul Howard, who survived a snapped pole to take 4th overall in the JT in 48.21 (and 2nd in the PV). Hugh Williams won the shot and amongst his non-scoring throws achieved a new JT PB. Chris Linque just edged out Devon Douglas in the discus, leaving their season long score 4-3 as they finished almost 10m clear of the opposition.
Short sprinters were aided by a wind that was at one point so strong it blew over and broke the wind gauge. It was only modestly over the legal limit for our A string 100m winners, denying PBs to U17 Denesha Rocastle (12.99 +2.8) and Olumide Ogunseitan (10.88 +2.6), who was backed up by U17 Jos Farquharson winning the B. The wind was clearly not helpful for times in longer events though. In the 800m Andrew Mariani won with a 40s last 300m off a very slow early pace, with Pete Caton taking the B string and with a PB for Vee Joshi who finished on Pete’s shoulder as a non-scorer. The women’s 800m also saw a double win for Bernadine Pritchett and Mille Finch. Suzanne Turvey won the 5000 in her track debut for the club.
Phoebe Fuhr enjoyed 2 wins, in the PV and HJ, with Rebecca Fafowora (pictured left in the 200m) taking the B string in the latter in our only jumps successes. Unusually, WGEL did not win any of the relays, finishing runner-up in all four, including a competitive mens 4x400 where U17 Adam Mountford (right) closed down but was unable to get past a 48s runner on the last leg. The final SAL match of the year is also at home, on Saturday 20 August.