The
Sprint Hurdlers enjoyed track at the year old Sutton
Arena to post many new personal bests and importantly
for Sarah Claxton a World Indoor Qualifying mark,
the 24 year old 2003 AAA Indoor champion, clocking
8.14, just 2/100ths outside her peronal best, but
crucially 3/100ths inside the mark for Budapest.
Others
of Lloyd Cowan's impressive sprint hurdles squad also
warmed up well for the forth coming AAA championships
at Sheffield. Last year's top 110 Hurdler Rob Newton
twice narrowly defeated training partner Mohammed
Silah Freckleton. Both recorded 7.8 manual in the
first series of races, and with the electronic timing
restored Newton set new best figures of 7.77 edging
out Freckleton whose 7.81 reduced his recent pb set
whilst winning at Loughborough a fortnight earlier.
There
were further pb's for two more of Cowan's Male sprint
hurdlers, 2003 Europa Cup representative improvd to
7.87, whilst Richard Alleyne edged closer to the 8
second barriers with 8.01. Former AAA u20 champion
Richard Sear also looked to be coming back into form
clocking 8.17 and 8.21 in his two races.
Elsewhere
the two remaing territorial championships saw impressive
results for some of the emegring women sprint hurdlers.
In the Midland Championships 2000 World Junior representative
Sara McGreavy set a new championhsip best and pb of
8.46 in winning from Claire Pearson's 8.53. In the
junior championship Nicola Robinson impressed in her
heat with 8.62 before taking the title later in the
day.
However,
Robinson's was not he fastest junior time of the weekend
as multi talented Jessica Ennis went to the top of
the 2004 u20 list with a 8.60 victory in the Northern
senior 60m hurdles. Also impressing at Sheffield was
2003 AAA 400 hurdles champion Liz Fairs as she took
the 400m indoor title in 53.62
Top
Junior of 2003 Scunthorpe's David Hughes took the
Northern 2004 Indoor title but was frustrated both
in heat and final by the failure of the electronic
timing system, Hughes clocking manually timed 8.2
on both occasssions.
4 February 2004
