Alastair improves two spots
STRIPPING more than half a second off his previous indoor best, Alastair Chalmers has jumped two places to sixth in the island’s all-time men’s 400m rankings.
Competing for the first time as a senior at the Spar British National Indoor Championships in Birmingham, the 18-year-old clocked 49.29sec. for fifth place in his heat, a big improvement on his efforts at the Scottish Championships in Glasgow a few weeks back.
The performance augurs well for the 400 hurdles specialist, whose best outdoors is 49.59, run last year.
His new best takes him above Nathan Stevens and the late Keith Falla, who now drop to joint seventh in Guernsey’s list of best performances, headed by Cameron Chalmers with a 45.64.
In Sheffield, three more Sarnians were in indoor action at the British Universities Championships.
The highlight was arguably a big personal best for Dan Galpin over 3000 metres.
The triathlete posted 8min. 52.11, an 18sec. improvement on his 2017 PB, for eighth place in his heat, while in the second race Jersey’s Commonwealth Games pick Elliott Dorey ran 8-33.05 for third.
Like Galpin, middle-distance specialist Richard Bartram was competing for the University of Bath and in his 1,500m heat he finished fifth in 4-03.65, slightly outside his season’s best performance.
Katie Rowe, representing Manchester University, showed some encouraging form over 800m and was denied victory in her heat by just one hundredth of a second.
Her time of 2-19.71 was a season’s best effort, four seconds inside her run at the Northern Championships on the same track in January.
Rowe, who did not compete on the track in either 2016 or 2017, has a lifetime 800 best of 2-15.71 which she ran in the heats of the 2015 NatWest Jsland Games in Jersey.
