While the club’s older athletes were picking up medals in the Surrey Masters and South of England senior championships, the best performance of the weekend was produced by one of the club’s youngest athletes, 12-year-old Mabel-Rose Scales, writes Tom Pollak.

Mabel-Rose strengthened her position at the top of this season’s UK rankings for the girls under 13 high jump by clearing a winning 1.60 metres in the Lily B League meeting at Walton-on-Thames on Saturday. It added three centimetres to her previous best set in winning her event in the English School Cup competition at Linford Christie Stadium, West London, last month. It was a fine warm-up for her competing in the London Schools Championships at Mile End next Tuesday.

Wimbledon Times:

Hercules Wimbledon sprinters filled two of the top three places in the South of England senior men’s 100 metres final at Bedford International Stadium on Saturday. After winning their heats in 10.70 and 10.58 seconds, Rechmial Miller and Theo Etienne finished first and second in their semi-final in faster 10.41 and 10.43, both their fastest times this season. However, they were both just pipped by one-hundredths of a second in the final where they posted slower times of 10.45 and 10.46 to take silver and bronze, respectively. Had they repeated their semi-final times in the final they would have taken gold and silver.

Miller was feeling the strain of competing in the biggest race of his life, the 100 metres, in the IAAF Diamond League Meeting in Stockholm two days earlier. He got a late call to run and was a fine fifth in 10.53 in the tightest of finishes in which he was just 0.02 seconds behind the runner-up in the eight-man race.

A third Hercules Wimbledon sprinter in action at Bedford was Surrey 100 metres champion Ryan Facey. He qualified for the semi-finals in finishing second in his heat in 10.96 and then went slightly faster to finish fifth in 10.90, narrowly failing to make the final. Facey also contested the 200m on Sunday finishing fourth in his heat in 22.41 and sixth in his semi-final in a faster 22.27, slightly slower than his lifetime best of 22.05 in taking the silver medal in the Surrey championships last month.

Wimbledon Times:

A squad of nine Hercules Wimbledon athletes picked up 18 medals in the Surrey Masters championships at Kingston on Sunday, 12 of them gold. Best of the group were Lisa Thomas and Paul Wignall who gained a hat-trick of golds each. Thomas took the over 50 400 and 800m and 300m hurdles titles while Wignall won the over 65 100, 200 and 400 metres gold medals. Richard Clark was a double winner taking the over 60 800 and 1500m golds.

Emilie Bokor-Ingram won the over 35 400m, took silver in the 200m and bronze in the 100m. Hamed Agboke won the over 35 400m, Malcolm Davies the over 50 800m and Mark White the over 50 400m. White also took the 100 and 200m silver medals in his age group. Helen Davies took the over 45 800m silver medal and Emil Hage won the over 50 400m bronze.

Hercules Wimbledon teenager Henry Silverstein completed a hat-trick of parkrun victories when he headed home 659 runners in Saturday’s Wimbledon Common parkrun in 16:53, beating club mate Sam Barker by 38 seconds. Meanwhile, Gina Galbraith was first woman finisher at Kingston in 18:23.

Wimbledon Times:

This weekend, Hercules Wimbledon’s youngsters are in action in the London Schools Championships at Battersea Park and the Surrey Schools Championships at Kingston. The club’s older athletes are in action in the third of tis season’s Southern Veterans League South London Division Meetings at Walton-on-Thames on Monday starting at 6.30pm.

Hercules Wimbledon’s Adam Blyth headed home the field in the Wimbledon Common half-marathon on Sunday with a runaway victory. He crossed the finishing line at the Richardson Evans Memorial Playing Fields almost six minutes ahead of the second runner in one hour 18 minutes 43 seconds.