Oxford athletes impress at Cosford
Martina Bomb shows her ability to outrun the tabs
Saturday of 0th week brought the first in a long line of fixtures for Oxford University Athletics Club this term, as athletes headed to the RAF base in Cosford for the annual invitation match. Oxford is among several university clubs invited to participate in this event, which also include Birmingham and arch-rivals Cambridge.
Thus it provided a useful warm-up in light of the up-and-coming Varsity match in fourth week, and an opportunity to see some of the fruits of a recent warm-weather training trip to Portugal. Announcing that the team would be leaving at eight o’clock sharp on Saturday morning was no doubt one of the contributing factors to fewer numbers at this event, but Oxford still managed to finish fourth overall in both the men’s and women’s competitions.
They beat Cambridge into sixth and seventh respectively, and even finished ahead of lottery-funded Birmingham. ‘Player of the match’ award has to go to Club President and Women’s Captain Martine Bomb. Barely into the season, Bomb achieved Blues standards in two out of her three events • she ran 63.2 in the 400m hurdles and then 15.1 in the 100m hurdles, and only missed out by point-seven of a second in the 200m, finishing second with a time of 26.0.
Perhaps this is understandable, given that it was the last event of the day. There are also high hopes for Sean Gourley who continues to dabble in a variety of events. This time he picked up valuable points in the 110m hurdles (15.8 seconds) and long jump (6.59m), as well as helping the 4x400m relay team to victory. Alongside Gourley were Rob Lawton, James Hogan and Danny Eckersley, who showed tremendous Dark Blue spirit in a gutsy run for the line to hold off the closing RAF athlete.
James Hogan, although slightly disappointed by his 800m time of 1.58.1, was delighted to clock 50.25 in his leg of the relay and is showing tremendous promise for the track season having had to miss much of it last year through illness. There were also pleasing performances in the distance events, with a victory for Laura Kyte over the 3000m event, clocking a personal best time of 10.26.7. Former Cross Country Club Captain Patrick Wallace also ran well to produce a PB of 9.42.
in a race that was graced with the presence of Commonwealth Games representative Luke Gunn. On the field, Frances Smithson continued to deliver some good performances. She produced a season’s best in the Long Jump with a leap of 5.39m, just six centimetres short of the Blues distance. She then went on to achieve 1.55m in the High Jump and jumped 10.67m in the Triple Jump. Elisabeth Hammond showed tremendous form in last term’s FEAR competition to clear 2.
0m in the Pole Vault, and it was perhaps her disappointment to only clear 1.90m in Cosford that led to her picking up the javelin for the first time ever and gain some valuable points for the OUAC team. Pete Harding opened his Blues campaign for the javelin with a throw of 44.89m, and Tom Brown showed signs of peaking for the Varsity match • he managed 12.62m in the Triple Jump and now seeks to better his best of 13.39m that he jumped at last year’s titanic clash.
The Cosford match also provided an opportunity for two athletes recovering from injury to get back into action. Dan Johnson made a welcome return to the track after a frustrating year to compete in the 100m and 4x100m relay. Men’s captain Jon Buckler participated in the Long Jump, having picked up a hamstring tear in Portugal, and was forced to be a bit cautious still. Both were disappointed with their respective performances.
However, patience and commitment will surely pay off for both these athletes, who are keen to get back into consistent training. There were encouraging signs from all those who competed, and reason to start getting excited about this year’s Varsity match. Club President Bomb said: “Cosford is a warmup event for OUAC. It gets some competition under our belts which builds confidence for things like BUSA and of course, the big one against Cambridge.
I’m very happy with what we achieved here today.
27th Apr 2006