Crikey, I thought it would be an easy number taking on the Statistician job at Spartans again. Instead we’ve had about a dozen new club records this season already and it’s only a couple of weeks old! This is assuming all are ratified by the Spartan committee.
Starting the rush was 40-year old Jo Gorrod who broke her own Spartan, Jersey and CI marathon record by clocking 2:50.39 in London last month. Zane Duquemin has twice improved Tony Satchwell’s 27-year old senior discus record, the latest in Gothenburg on Saturday on the occasion of his first English senior vest, throwing 56.00m. Sister Shadine has similarly twice moved on her U17 shot mark to 12.o2m and has also improved her discus to 43.13m. Ross Jeffs set a new senior triple jump record of 13.95m in the BUCS.
New sensation Stanley Livingston is carving chunks off various U15 marks – 51.09 for 400m, 23.54 for 200m, and 11.28 for the 80m hurdles which had stood for 18 years. For good measure he clocked 57.21 in the U17s 400mH race setting a GB all-time best in the non-standard and rarely recorded U15 rankings for this event.
The rarely-spotted left handed hammer thrower Donnie Rocket chucked 52.40m yesterday in Portsmouth whilst Robbie Stenhouse set a new U17M 200m electronically timed mark of 22.97, though Steven Prosser was hand-timed at 22.5 in Guernsey seven years ago.
The Duquemins and Livingston are up there in the top few in GB in their events. However I was disappointed to see the lack of athletes in the younger age groups in the county championships over the weekend. Out of interest here are the number of Spartan medalists at U13G level in recent years.
2000 – 0
2001 – 8
2002 – 9
2003 – 7
2004 – 14
2005 – 10
2006 – 2
2007 – 5
2008 – 2
2009 – 5
2010 – 5
2011 – 2
Not sure what this illustrates but I can’t help but be frustrated that we’re so thin on the ground these days.