Indoor season building up
The indoor season is now well underway, with Woodford athletes competing both at Lee Valley and around the country. Yemi Mary John ran an under-20 indoor club best of 24.39 over 200m at the Lee Valley New Year Open and the following week 38.87 for 300m, to date the top ranked under-20 performance globally in the 21-22 indoor season. Fellow under-20 Gwen Datey ran an outright 200m PB of 25.13 to win her heat. 13 year old Thomas Niewczasinski-Kirkland ran an impressive 25.07 in his debut 200m to briefly top the new year U15 ranking lists, as did U20 Medwin Odamtten with 6.96 to win his 60m. Another to top early season ranking lists was Isabelle Kyson who ran 9.34 in the U15 girls 60m hurdles, the fastest by a club member in over 25 years.
At the BMC Grand Prix in Sheffield Louise Gilbert ran an outright 800m PB by over three seconds to dominate her race in 2:11.57. Anna Clark opened her season slightly faster, 2:11.04, for 2nd in the B race. Ben Potrykus went into the 3000m expecting to improve his PB significantly in his first race at the distance since 2019 and did not disappoint, with his 8:08.06 for 2nd in the B race.
Another multi-eventer (see the separate article on Rebecca Wright's South of England victory) to improve a SP PB was decathlete Howard Bell, who threw 13.75 in Glasgow.