Lewis Church and Harry Kendall, from Tonbridge Athletic Club, scored an historic one-two placing at the English National Decathlon Championships at the weekend, after an epic two-day battle with the best multi-eventers in the country.
The friends and training partners, alongside the club’s multi-event group, have been tested more than most over the past year, in terms of making training adjustments and improvising, especially with the more technical events. This has required making their own facilities and equipment to work with at home, with gyms and tracks closed around the country.
The Decathlon comprises the ten events, split with five taking place on each day, opening with the 100 metres. Kendall ran 11.37 and Church 11.65, both relatively close to their bests. Then in the second event, they really came to life, both recording pbs, as Kendall jumped 7.11m and Church 6.96m, which put them first and third, respectively, of the 21 starters. Big personal bests followed again for both, in the Shot Putt, with Church closing the points gap slightly with a throw of 14.41m to Kendall’s 14.02m.
In the fourth event, the High Jump, which is a strong one for both, Church cleared 2.01m to move into second place, whilst Kendall’s 1.95m saw him retain his lead. Day One finishes with the 400 metres and again both were not far away from their pbs, which is the key to a good decathlon score. Kendall ran 50.72 and Church 51.29 to reach the halfway stage in the top two places.
Day Two, on Sunday, opened with the 110 metres hurdles and it was here that Church took the lead, recording 15.04 to Kendall’s 15.80, which was a swing of 90 points. Despite a personal best in the Discus of 37.53m, Kendall slipped to third, whilst Church’s 40.47m retained his overall lead.
The Pole Vault is perhaps the most challenging technically of all the events, but again they were close to their best-ever heights, with Church scaling 4.44m and Kendall 4.24m, the latter moving back into second overall. Kendall kept the heat on Church with a 58.31m Javelin throw, which added more than two metres to his best-ever distance. With Church throwing 52.93m there was now just 84 points between them, with Church leading on 6741, going into the last event.
The final event is the 1500 metres, generally the least favoured by decathletes, but Lewis Church puts in some training to focus on this and ran 4.41.61 to secure the National title with 7411 points. Kendall ran 4.53.78 to bring his total to 7253, which added 164 points to his personal best. Both athletes will have one eye on the Commonwealth Games standard of 7750 points, as the championships take place next year in Birmingham.
Alex Hookway, who partners Church and Kendall in training, finished 10th in the Decathlon, whilst Samantha Stubbs finished 9th in the under 20 women’s Heptathlon.
There were some other highlights across the weekend, achieved by the club’s athletes. On Friday evening, Nicole Taylor broke the Tonbridge women’s 5km road record with 15.53.4, when winning at Battersea. Corey De’Ath ran 14.23.5 to place 5th in the men’s race.
Also on Friday, James West qualified for the National Collegiate championships in the USA, when he finished third at the West Region event over 1500m, with a season’s best of 3.38.96. West is now ranked 11th in the UK, in one of the country’s strongest events. Then on Saturday, Chris Olley ran 3.42.32 in Portland, USA and Simon Coppard 3.44.16, at Manchester, which were both big personal bests. Also, amongst the highlights at Manchester, was Alasdair Kinloch’s 5000m best of 14.08.63, as he placed 6th in the British Milers Club A-race, whilst Charlie Crick recorded an 800m pb of 1.52.94.
The under 17 and 20 squad took part in the first UK Youth Development League meeting of the season on Saturday, but could only finish 5th of the six clubs. The highlight performance came in the under 17 women’s Shot Put, from Caitlin Ebbage, who added 49cm to the mark that she set last year, with 11.75m.