Secretary's Report to AGM 2002

The last twelve months must be the most successful in our 115 year history - but we have suffered a few setbacks and were shocked in July by the death of our General Secretary and Past President Bill Couzens. Ever present at our functions Bill will be sorely missed for a long time.

adidas

The tone for the next half decade was set in April when our Sponsorship & Development Committee negotiated a deal with adidas who, for the first time ever, committed themselves to a partnership with a club athletics team. We thank adidas and trust that we are providing the additional exposure they seek.

Two Belgravians were elected to Presidential office with athletic associations during the past year: Pam Davies was President of the Surrey County Athletic Association and Alan Black was President of the South of Thames Cross Country Association.

Recently we were pleased to present a South of England AA long service award to Johnny Morris who has officiated for us at race walking, road & cross country events and track & field competitions for more years than we care to recall.

And while thinking of some of those who have done so much work for us over the years, we should formally record our thanks to two people who have contributed greatly to the development of our club during the last twenty years. Life Member Sue Porter was our Secretary for some considerable time and Harry Porter, apart from being a Past President, has been an outstanding figure in the development of our women’s section; both have also been very involved in our social activities; both have regularly and over a long period officiated for us at all types of events and in particular have been our starter and marksman at countless track and field meetings. The reason for recording these thanks now is that they are planning a move to France.

Track and Field

In track & field our most notable team success was the winning of the first ever combined men’s and women’s cup competition. So dominant were we in the final that we won the Golden Jubilee Cup by a huge margin and both our male and female athletes would have won the old single gender competitions outright. We can now point to our women’s track and field team being the strongest in the country at one to score per event and would be justified in claiming the right for our women to join our men in representing the UK in the European Clubs’ Cup in 2003.

And speaking of the European Cup for Champion Clubs, although our men’s team was not at its very strongest in Lisbon, we nevertheless placed 6th in Group A, facing teams that were virtually national squads. This was the 7th time we have competed in Europe.

In the Women’s Southern League our team once again earned promotion and next year will be competing in Division One where the opposition will be seriously stronger and we face the final barriers that stand between our women’s team and the UK Women’s Track & Field League.

As for the men, in spite of the draw on our resources by the Commonwealth Games and European Championships, we again proved ourselves to be the most powerful team by far in the British Athletics League, winning Division One for a sixth successive year and the eighth time all told. One more win and we will have held the title more times than any other club.

Here we should remind ourselves of the part played by Bill Laws in managing our British League Team. This year has seen his 20th season as BAL Team Manager - two decades that have given us unprecedented success and which have shown other sections of our club what can be done when one is committed to achieving goals. It is doubtful whether there is any other club in our sport that has a man with such a managerial record. In the annual club rankings, back at the beginning of his tenure, we were rated at 35th men’s team; these lists have long been discontinued but there surely would be no argument that, thanks to Bill and the people who have worked with him, we are now number 1.

In the Men’s Southern League we were unable to turn out teams to do justice to our depth and as a result have been relegated to Division Two.

As with the Men’s Southern League, the younger male teams, too, found themselves stalling. After winning the National Junior League final two seasons ago and narrowly missing winning in 2001, this summer has found us at the bottom of the Southern Premier Division, suffering simply from a drop in the number of available athletes. The National Young Athletes team, promoted to the Southern Premier Division at the beginning of the season similarly found themselves short of competitors and have also ended the year in the relegation zone. It is interesting that it is in the younger age group of our successful Women’s Southern League team that we face the most pressure and it is obvious that if we wish to maintain our intake of athletes of this age then we need, as a club, to do put in some serious work.

Race Walking

Race Walking, we are told, is now in danger of being dropped from the Olympic Games. We cannot deny that names on the result sheets up and down the country bear a great similarity to those of twenty, thirty, even fifty years ago. Some young people are attracted into the sport but by and large they are not there by the time they reach their ‘teens. Race Walking is highly regarded by other nations but in the UK, without a more alluring image it is difficult to see how new enthusiasts can be attracted. In the face of all of this our walkers continue to enjoy their sport - and pick up the occasional prizes as well.

Road Running and Cross Country

In Road Running we have managed to emulate the success gained on the track and in Cross Country we are also making great strides. Soon after our last AGM we placed 3rd in the men’s Southern 6-Stage Road Relay, medallists in this event for the first time, and a month later we pulled off a shock win in the AAA 6-Stage race at Sutton Coldfield; of all the road relays this is the hardest to win. It wasn’t only our men who shocked as the women’s 4-Stage team placed 7th in their first try at a AAA event. Unofficially, with the combined positions of our men’s and women’s teams, we were top road running club of the day.

Switching to the Country, the men regained the Surrey Cross Country League Division One title - with 40 different men turning out in the four matches - and the women won their series to earn promotion to Division One. At the National Cross Country Championships the men placed in the top ten for the third successive year and Allen Graffin won our first individual medal since 1948, placing second.

We have come out of a period which saw the demise of our cross country championships and have been able to inaugurate competitions for our men and women based on the six major cross country events and have incorporated our men’s cross country championship into the SEAA’s 9 mile race.

Back to the Road and in the Spring at Bath our senior women won national team medals - silver - in the AAA & UK Half Marathon Championship. In the same event the men became AAA & UK Champions, earning selection to represent the UK in the European Clubs Half Marathon Championship in Almada, Portugal, this coming October. The Solent 5k was the next race to fall to Belgrave with a record low score and we won the Thames Valley Harriers Road Relay for the first time in 51 years, in record time. The Southern 12-stage was last won by us in 1990 here at Wimbledon; now we won it again, at Milton Keynes, once more in a record time, and also provided the first B team. The women’s 6-Stage team placed 4th from 35 clubs having been “in the medals” for half the race.

So, to the AAA “National” 12-Stage Road Relay, where a Belgrave onslaught saw us win by a record margin just short of six and a half minutes ahead of the second team. We have had our hands on the National “London-Brighton” trophy before - in 1951 - when participation was on on a much more limited basis. Both long and short stage fastest times went to Belgrave athletes Allen and Andy Graffin. As is now often the case, the women’s team were not far short of the men’s performance, placing 5th and leading at the end of the first stage.

To finish with Road Running, just a week ago we were second in the men’s AAA 10 km Championship at Bradford.

Tremendous individual performances

Just as our team performances reached new heights, so too did our individual athletes.

A dozen medallists at the AAA Championships included two winners - Mick Jones in the hammer and Phillips Idowu in triple jump.

Vernicha James became our first global champion since John Regis when she won the World Junior 200 metre Championship in Jamaica. Incredibly, Amy Spencer, at 16 years of age, was also in the final of that race and both won silver and bronze medals in the GB relay squads.

Twenty seven events at the Commonwealth Games featured Belgrave athletes - 17 men of whom 10 reached the finals and 10 women including 7 finallists. Shelley Newman took bronze in the discus; bronze went to Vernicha James who ran in the sprint relay; high jumper Ben Challenger began to scale the heights again - and won bronze; Phillips Idowu produced a massive leap in the triple jump to lead the competition but ultimately take silver; Sean Baldock collected gold as part of the 4 x 400 metres squad; Mick Jones, one of the most popular of athletes was delighted - as were we - when he won the hammer throw gold.

Eight Belgravians represented the United Kingdom in Munich in the European Championships. Shelley Newman and Dwain Chambers made it to their finals - and Dwain won his first major games title with 9.96 in the 100 metres.

Six times Dwain Chambers came up against Maurice Greene, at that time the World Record holder, and five times the Belgrave man came out on top. Had Dwain not lost to the USA’s Tim Montgomery in that World Record breaking race at the IAAF GP Final, then he would have been officially rated no. 1 in the world. As it is, at the moment, he is clearly no. 2, having equalled the European and UK Records with 9.87.

Our senior men’s club records are mature standards and difficult to improve but twice Chambers trimmed his own 100m best, twice Phillips Idowu did the same in the triple jump, taking it to 17.68m and the second best in the world for 2002, and Andy Graffin improved our indoor 1 mile time to 3:57.48.

Almost every one of our senior women’s track & field indoor and outdoor records were broken in 2002. A total of 43 improvements

The challenge

In 1993 at the AGM we challenged ourselves that around the turn of the millennium we would consistently turn out winning teams across the spectrum of athletics; that we would put in place an administration that could support these teams; that we would provide team managers who could take these teams to compete at the very highest levels, nationally and in Europe. We wanted future Belgravians 50 years hence to look back to this time with the same respect for the men and women who achieved these goals, as we have for those who took the club to national titles in the 1930s, 40s and early 50s.

Surely we have mostly achieved those aims and can now afford a moment to congratulate and thank one another.

In spite of this success there is still, now, much to do. We will always need more administrators, more coaches, more team managers, more officials, and perhaps most important of all a muster of young bloods prepared to take up the reins when their time comes. Oh! so slowly there are signs that at least some of these needs are being addressed.

Alan Mead, Acting General Secretary, 18 September 2002

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