Olympic Qualifying Mark for Dan Rowden plus other T &F news
This weekend on Sunday will see Woodford Green w EL undertake their first NAL fixture of the season. The first since the old BAL and UKWL were merged after end of the 2019 season with no NAL fixtures taking place in 2020. Fixtures this season will be very much of a “hybrid” nature with teams grouped on a local basis within division and then performances compared across the four fixtures for each division. Over the past couple of weeks several Woodford athletes have put in high class performances including GB debuts for Will Grimsey and Phil Norman and Olympic qualifying marks for Dan Rowden, Cindy Sember and Tiffany Porter
Will Grimsey and Phil Norman earned their GB debuts competing at the European Team Championships at Chorsow, Poland. Will placed a fine 2nd in the high jump with a clearance of 2.24m the same as the winner but lost out on countback. Phil Norman entered the 3000m s/ch as the fastest in the field this season but despite looking comfortable in a slow race where the first 2km was only just inside 6m Phil lost out over the final lap as he finished 6th with 8m42.78 secs. Nevertheless, having already achieved the Olympic Games qualifying mark Phil can now focus on confirming an Olympic team place at the British Championships in 3 weeks. Another with Olympic ambitions, last season’s GB number one Dan Rowden, opened his season in the Diamond League fixture in Doha and against good opposition placed a close third in 1m44.60 secs, comfortably inside the Olympic qualifying mark of 1m45.20 secs. Dan followed this up in Gothenburg on Wednesday winning a slower but still good quality race in 1m45.64 secs. In the U.S. Cindy Sember who, along with her sister Tiffany Porter has already bettered the Olympic qualifying mark for the 100mH of12.84 secs on four occasions this season, did so twice more in the same meeting at Jacksonville, Florida recording 12.75 secs (+1.0) and 12.76 secs (+0.6). Tiffany, who also had four previous Olympic standards this season, recorded another in the same meeting with 12.79 secs (+0.7) having run 12.85 secs (+1.2) in her heat.
At Bedford last weekend at the Jumps and Throws fest, Youcef Zatat won the shot with 17.92m whilst Lucy Marshall placed 5th in a good hammer competition with 55.39m. In the high jump Amelia MacDonald cleared 1.60m and HCA member Curtis Wood 1.91m, whilst another HCA member, Aoibheann Pearce, recorded 8m03.48 secs for 2000m s/ch.
The Bedford meeting also incorporated the England Decathlon Champs and Howard Bell put together a very solid series to place 4th with 6780 points. His marks were 11.64 secs (+0.4 100m, 6.90m w (+2.1) LJ, 13.19m SP, 1.89m HJ, 51.87 secs 400m, 15.59 secs (-1.2) 110mH, 3.75m PV, 35.85m DT, 50.84m (PB) JT and 4m58.22 secs 1500m.