Nene Valley Harriers’ men’s track and field team pulled off a remarkable result to finish second in their British League fixture at Manchester.
Seriously depleted due to holidays, illness and injury, the squad travelled north with thoughts of a damage limitation exercise – but returned home as a team of heroes.
Nene Valley have a reputation for recruiting many of the best young athletes from the Peterborough and South Lincolnshire district, and all those promoted to the senior team on Saturday acquitted themselves well.
Gideon Okoh and teenager Ronan Rawlings picked up maximum points in the 100m.
Rawlings was not satisfied with his time of 11.28secs, so proceeded to run in the non-scorers race, in which he remarkably clocked a personal best (PB) time of 11.11secs.
He followed this up with third place in the B 200m. The A race was won by another of Nene Valley’s talented teens, Spalding’s William Hughes, with a 22.23secs clocking.
Middle distance men James McCrae and Lloyd Kempson picked up valuable points in the 800m and 1,500m, with McCrae running 1.57.15mins for the runners-up spot in the 800m.
As is often the case, the experienced Nene Valley throwers excelled with Martin Tinkler and Ken Baker comfortably winning their shot putt events, while newcomer Alex Ingham threw the javelin 58.36m for an impressive victory.
- Overall results: 1st Trafford AC 270 points; 2nd Nene Valley 216 points; 3rd City of Portsmouth 212 points; 4th Brighton 200 points; 5th Reading 161 points; 6th Doncaster 141 points.
