Photo – Henry Marshall winning the 400 metres at the National League fixture at Portsmouth
James West, from Tonbridge Athletic Club, has been selected for the Great Britain team, to compete in the upcoming European Athletics Championships, in Rome. West will run in the 5000 metres final on Saturday evening. His selection follows some fine recent form, including a 13.09.07 clocking over 5000 metres.
It has been an action-packed week for members of Tonbridge AC, with the opening National Athletics League fixture of the season, taking place at Portsmouth, whilst the club also hosted an evening open meeting on Tuesday and the Southern Counties Veterans League fixture, on Friday.
The Tonbridge squad produced a dominant display against the other five clubs, at Portsmouth, scoring 577 points and being 101 clear of the second-placed team, the City of Portsmouth. Tonbridge will have three such fixtures, with the aim of qualifying for the promotion match in early August.
Contributing significantly to the team victory was the fact that Tonbridge didn’t drop a single point across the A and B string men’s track events at 400m, 800m, 1500m, 3000m and steeplechase.
Henry Marshall won the A-string 400m in 48.37 and then set a 200m personal best of 22.06, when winning the B-string 200m. Charlie Crick ran 1.53.33 to win the 800m and then 48.80 to win the B-string 400m. There were also A-string wins for Jack Higgins (1500m 3.50.75), Ted Higgins (3000m 8.33.48) and Calum Laing (3000m steeplechase 10.11.57). The men’s 4x400m relay team also won the final track event of the day in 3.17.55. Asha Root continued her fine form winning the women’s 400m in 56.47.
In the field, Lewis Church was as busy as ever and amongst his performances were wins in the High Jump with 1.93m and the Pole Vault with 4.50m. Harry Kendall won the Discus with a throw of 41.52m, just ahead of Steve Simmons, who won the B-string with 41.37, which was a huge pb.
Kirsty-Anne Ebbage is enjoying a superb season and, on this occasion, won the Discus with 45.26m and was second in the Hammer with 47.52m. Similarly, Georgia Baker won the Long Jump with 5.33m and was second in the Triple Jump with a personal best of 10.97m. Bronwyn Yeandle captured the Pole Vault victory with 3.40m.
On Friday, evening the Tonbridge men’s and women’s teams won their second matches in the Southern Counties Veteran’s League.
Tonbridge also hosted an open meeting, in very cool and windy conditions on Tuesday evening, where amongst the highlights was a personal best Javelin throw of 49.13m from Sam Newton, who is in the under 17 age group. James Kingston ran the fastest 1500m of the evening, with a personal best of 3.48.41.
At the weekend, Jay Smith won the Harvel 5 miles multi-terrain race and Dan Bradley the Marden 10km road race.