All stars regardless of fast or slow lane

The latest in our series counting down to the Guernsey Press Sporting Achievement of the Year Award...

GUERNSEY has never had a female distance runner quite like her.

There is a certain irony then that the man who has plotted Louise Perrio's gradual climb up through the national rankings to get within reach of a first Commonwealth Games appearance, is the father of the young lady who may, in time, knock Perrio, pictured, off her pedestal.

We are talking Alan Rowe and his national cross-country winning daughter, but while Katie is very much one for the future, Louise Perrio is the present and shows no sign of ending her relentless improvement and bettering of her island records.

She started 2012 as island record-holder over 3,000m, 5,000m, 10,000 and half-marathon.

By the end of the year she had improved them all greatly, the shortest of those by four seconds, the 5k by 20sec. and the 'half' by about five and a half minutes.