Club Records for Khogali and Potrykus; Euro qualifying for Norman.
New Woodford Club Records led many recent fine performances from Woodford’s senior athletes. Sam Khogali and Ben Potrykus recorded a new absolute best in the long jump and a domestic 5000m best respectively.
Sam Khogali who was 2nd in the UK indoor championships (and a previous winner) in February showed he was rounding into some decent form with 7.53m at Loughborough competed at Annecy on Saturday where he improved his personal best to 7.92m (+0.9). This now become the Club absolute record improving both his own “domestic” best of 7.83m and Ezekiel Ewolu’s absolute best of 7.85m. Running at the IFAM Meet in Bruxelles, Ben Potrykus improved his personal best over 5000m by almost 10 seconds to record 13m38.79 secs to improve Phil Norman’s “domestic best of 13m46.80 secs and just miss the absolute best of 13m38.41 secs held by Youcef Abdi. Also in Belgium Jasmine Mitchell recorded 57.83 secs over 400m.
Phil Norman himself has been in great recent form recording the fastest 2000m s/ch by a British athlete since 1992 with 5m25.50 secs in Germany and then achieving a European Championship qualifying mark over 3000m s/ch with 8m21.09 secs when placing 3rd in Karlsruhe Germany. Northern Ireland Commonwealth Games representative Ellen McCartney has twice been close to her club pole vault record of 4.31m with 4.30m both at Loughborough last weekend and in Germany on Friday.
Competing in the US for their respective Universities in the NCAA qualifiers, Nabil Tezkratt and Yemi Mary John both raced well over 400m to progress to the NCAA Finals. Nabil recorded a personal best of 45.85 secs (the 4th best ever by a Woodford athlete) and later split a 45.07 third leg in the 4x400, whilst Yemi Mary recorded a season’s best of 51.60 secs. Kiah Dubary-Gray recorded a season’s best over 200m of 23.42 secs in the heats.
Also in the US but at the Eugene Diamond League meeting on Saturday, Cindy Sember placed 7th in the 100mH with 12.79 secs (-0.9) which compares with her season's best of 12.57 secs (-0.8) which currently ranks her 15th on the World lists
Leading marks from Woodford athletes at the BIG meeting included personal bests both in the long and triple jump for Mary Elcock with 6.08m and 13.02m, whilst UK Champion Georgina Forde-Wells recorded 12.59 in the TJ. U/17 Caitlin Hancock recorded 5.47m and HCA athlete Calum Henderson 7.04m. In the high jump Will Grimsey was a little below his recent form (2.23m twice) with a 2.18m clearance and in the discus, Mark Plowman opened his season with a solid 48.58m.
At the BMC Manchester Grand Prix, Louise Gilbert recorded 4m28.82 secs over 1500m and HCA athlete Jess Norkett 2m11.83 secs over 800m, whilst at the Chelmsford hurdles meeting Yasmin Uwakwe recorded 14.22 secs and 14.27 secs.