European Champion Clubs Cup Group A, Albufeira, Portugal

Opposition a bit tasty in Albufeira

Bill Laws writes:- Belgrave’s ninth incursion into Europe for the men’s Champion Clubs Cup turned out to be more traumatic than any of the preceding fixtures. Travel problems played some part in a generally lack lustre overall performance and several athletes who were opening their season paid the price for lack of earlier competition. Only peak performances had much hope of producing good points when virtually every event had a sprinkling of Olympic finalists.

The team had travelled out on two flights. The first one was early and meant the team mustering at 4.30 am while the second afternoon flight was delayed six hours resulting in part of the team arriving at Faro Airport after midnight and arriving in Albufeira at 1.30am on the first day of competition. Such are the joys of travelling on a Bank Holiday weekend.

The local weather conditions for the first day of competition were warm but windy with headwinds down the home straight of up to 3.7m/s. The sprint times suffered accordingly and the longer races became tactical with results being decided by the fast finishers. At this level there are some really quick men in the track races and it was a lesson to all to see how some of our men who prided themselves on being a bit tasty were blown away by the awesome finishing speed of the other team’s athletes. Lessons learned and back to the drawing board for many.

Our two wins were on the track with William Sharman getting the photo decision following an apparent dead heat with Luch Moscow’s Borisov. Later William led off our victorious sprint relay squad. Chris Lambert went off fractionally early, checked but took the baton in zone. Darren Chin timed the next handover to perfection and Wade Bennett Jackson entered the home straight with a clear lead. Easing over the last ten metres and looking left he was almost run down by the Luch Moscow’s fast finishing Yepishin who was on his right and had earlier finished third in the 100 to Wade’s fifth placing. Still a win is a win and the squad celebrated accordingly.

We had predicted 35 points on day one and ended on 34 with just 6 points covering the bottom four teams. We then predicted 38 points on day two which, if achieved, would have taken us halfway up the table. But as events unfolded we managed to glean only 22 more precious points and finished up in the relegation spot to Group B.

There were some notable achievements including three pb’s. Chris Gearing finished the shot with a new best of 17.90m to gain an excellent fourth place in exalted company. Neil Speaight ran a lifetime best in the 3000m the day after finishing fourth in the 1500m in which local hero, sprint specialist and Olympic bronze medallist Rui Silva could only manage second. And finally triple jumper novice Gary Wilson leapt a windy 14.57m competing for the first time off the 13m board. So a big day for him with lots more to come.

The positives we take from this are that a number of very young athletes gained experience at the highest level. They all came through it well, and have been inspired to move on to greater things. We wish them well.

On the negative side we were disappointed to see other teams with full quotas of high scoring foreign athletes. One team had signed a South African athlete 10 days earlier and had got over the rules by making him a citizen with dual nationality. Their National Governing Body had totally different rules on eligibility from, say, those of UKA. Until the EAA gets its rules tightened and properly policed these Championships will not be on a level playing field.

100m: (-1.6) 1 F Obikwelu (Sporting Club Portugal) 10.23; ... ; 5 W Bennett-Jackson 10.64.

100m: n/s (-2.4) 1 D Chin 10.72.

200m: (+2.0) 1 F Obikwelu (Sporting Club Portugal) 20.93; … 3 C Lambert 21.26.

400m: 1 C Licciardello (Fiamme Gialle Rome) 46.26; … 6 R Thomas 48.76.

800m: 1 D Bogdanov (Luch Moscow) 1:52.29; … 7 G Oudney 1:54.05

1500m: 1 Y Baba (Fenerbahce Spor Klubu) 3:45.55; … 4 N Speaight 3:48.15.

3000m: 1 R Silva (Sporting Club Portugal) 8:02.72; … 7 N Speaight 8:17.55.

5000m: 1 H Akkas (Fenerbahce Spor Klubu) 14:05.66; … 6 S Jones 14:57.79.

110mH: (+2.8) 1 W Sharman 13.90w

400mH: 1 O Cilliers (Fenerbahce Spor Klubu) 50.37; … 6 M Douglas 55.69.

3000mSC: 1 H Akkas (Fenerbahce Spor Klubu) 8:44.00; … 6 J Chaston 8:57.42.

4x100m: 1 Belgrave H (W Sharman, C Lambert, D Chin, W Bennett-Jackson) 40.37.

4x400m: 1 Luch Moscow 3:10.89; … 7 Belgrave (M Douglas 50.4, G Oudney 48.4, R Thomas 48.6, W Sharman 50.7) 3:18.08

HJ: 1 V Voronin (Luch Moscow) 2.27; … 3 S Oni 2.20.

LJ: 1 D Valukevic (AK Spartak Dubnica) 7.53; … 6 D O’Farrell 7.09 (0.7)

TJ: 1 Y Plotnir (Luch Moscow) 16.96; … 7 G Wilson 14.57w/3.7.

PV: 1 A Kuptsov (Luch Moscow) 5.50; … 4 J Ive 5.00.

SP: 1 Y Bilonog (Sporting Club Portugal) 19.68; … 4 C Gearing 17.90.

DT: 1 A Borichevskiy (Luch Moscow) 60.96; … 6 S Thompson 52.73.

JT: 1 A Ivonov (Luch Moscow) 85.75; … 7 J Everard 57.97.

HT: 1 N Vizzoni (Fiamme Gialle Rome) 78.21; … 5 M Jones 62.53.

Teams: 1 Luch Moscow (RUS) 110; 2 Sporting Club Portugal (POR) 84; 3 Puma Chapin Jerez (ESP) 84; 4 AK Spartak Dubnica (SVK) 74; 5 Fiamme Gialle Rome (ITA) 77 ?; 6 Fenerbahce Spor Kulubu (TUR) 69; 7 Belgrave H (GBR) 59.

Restored from the club's earlier website, belgraveharriers.com, and published here as originally written.