Surrey County AA Road Relays, Wimbledon Park
Silver Bels and Cockerell excels
Women's team in the medals again
With a team not as strong as in recent years it was thought that our men’s squad might struggle to get into the medals but the irrepressible Will Cockerell treated us to a display of pure Will Power on stage 1 as he ran to a time of 14:17 – the second fastest ever run on this circuit in a claret and gold vest. Third into the take-over area behind Herne Hill’s non-scoring John Downes and SLH’s Stuart Major, Will has run himself into consideration for an A team slot in the forthcoming Southern 6-Stage. New man Peter Fallenius, running for the Bs, headed the field after half a mile but then hit calf muscle problems that had him hobbling the rest of the way home while Vicky Edwards gave the women’s team a solid start of 4th place in her first ever team run in Belgrave colours.
Stage two saw marathon lady Angela Walker take the women up a place and at the head of the field Lee Greatorex, dragged into the team on the Friday night, delighted our supporters by running into an unexpected lead ahead of Herne Hill’s scoring team and holders South London Harriers. For the Cs, Padraic Buckley ran a cool 14:50 with no warm-up, his arrival at the venue coinciding with that of the leading first stage runners!
Another Belgravian with marathon aspirations, James Browne was unhappy with himself for letting first place slip away on stage three but he need not have worried as it was a non-scoring Thames outfit that temporarily went ahead by five seconds, with our man reducing his previous best for the course by over half a minute. As if our men’s team don’t have enough opposition, Catherine Eastham’s girls, determined to go one better than the men, took the Belles into the lead in the women’s race thanks to a super run from Syreeta Stracey. A double victory seemed just about possible.
Helen Alsop owns our fastest ever women’s time on the Wimbledon course but had to give way to the fastest woman of the day as South London and Ranelagh squeezed past on the final lap but our girls were delighted to collect bronze medals for the second time in this event.
While Mrs. Alsop was completing the women’s four stage team, husband Roger took the men ahead again and drew ever further away in an attempt to give the last two men in the six lap race enough leeway to hold on for a victory. Roger’s time was just one second down on his best and the leading margin was around 50 seconds as he handed over to an unfit Stephen Kennefick who had not anticipated being thrown into this bubbling cauldron. Stephen worked hard but could not stop the “Hill” from closing to within 30 metres by the end of the stage, leaving new veteran Junior Galley with the unenviable task of holding off a rival known to be considerably faster. Out of the park and up the hill by the All-England tennis courts, Junior was swiftly run down by the man in red and black but then, incredibly, he held on … and on … Inevitably a gap did eventually open but as they entered the finish area our man was a mere 15 seconds down and held that to the end. A redoubtable relay runner, Junior had run a full half minute faster than expected and having seen his finishing powers before one could well believe his first words when he had managed to pick himself up from all fours: “If I could just have held on a little longer and been within five metres of him when we got onto the track, I’d have out-kicked him.
Our men’s silver streak in this race now extends to four successive races.
Men.
1 Herne Hill H 1:29:10; 2 Belgrave H 1:29:24; 3 South London H.
A – W.Cockerell 14:17 (3); L.Greatorex 15:13 (1); J.Browne 14:40 (2); R.Alsop 14:24 (1); S.Kennefick 15:34 (1); J.Galley 15:15 (2).
B – P.Fallenius 15:55 (15); P.Tarpey 16:36 (16); R.Tubbs 15:57 (11); W.Lynch 16:18 (10); M.Webb 16:01; R.Marcus 16:37 (8).
C – A.Cowmeadow 17:47 (17); P.Buckley 14:50 (13).
Veteran M40.
A – C.Dickinson (M50) 15:44 (6); D.Anderson 18:16 (7); H.Corbett 18:39 (7); M.Nouch 17:17 (7).
B – S.Collins 17:21 (11); J.Stone 22:37 (12).
Women.
1 South London H; 2 Ranelagh H; 3 Belgrave H.
A – V.Edwards 17:55 (4); A.Walker 18:51 (3); S.Stracey 18:46 (1); H.Alsop 18:52 (3).
B – T.Sturton 18:18 (6); Jo Poloni 22:58 (9).
Restored from the club's earlier website, belgraveharriers.com, and published here as originally written.