Young sprint duo’s indoor missions accomplished
TOM DRUCE expects Alastair Chalmers to join him, brother Cameron and Dale Garland in the sub-48sec. club this summer after Ala’s bronze-medal winning performance at the England National Age Group Indoor Championships at the EIS in Sheffield over the weekend.
But, for now, the younger Chalmers brother is switching his focus back to hurdling as he fine-tunes his performance ahead of the fast-approaching Commonwealth Games in Australia.
‘Ala may even try and get a local [hurdles] race in if the weather is good enough,’ said Druce, who was with the small Guernsey Athletics squad in Sheffield.
‘We didn’t expect him to win it because the guy who did has run 47sec. We thought Ala would be in the chase for third or fourth.’
As it happened Chalmers saw a big improvement from his performance at last week’s senior British Championships as he went under 49sec. for the first time with a new best of 48.70sec after two tough wins in the heats and semi-finals the previous day.
It now means that he is the fourth fastest of all time behind his brother Cameron, Druce and his coach Dale Garland – though he has a couple of seconds to find if he wants to make inroads into the top three.
Chalmers stripped more than half a second off his PB with the medal-winning run. ‘It’s quite a big jump and I knew he was always capable of that,’ said the former 400m Island record-holder.
‘That track is not significantly quick either,’ he added.
Chalmers was joined in the 400m heats by Peter Curtis, who was hampered by an unfortunate lane assignment in his 400m in Sheffield last month which meant he went into this weekend with a less favourable seeding and with it another difficult lane draw.
He attacked the race from lane two but was unable to hold on and came home in 51.28.
But the Sarnian performance of the weekend undoubtedly came from Sophie Porter, who claimed the senior Island 400m record by 0.02sec. in winning national bronze in the indoor two-lap event.
She clocked an outstanding 56.32sec in the final to surpass Indi Gallagher’s PB performance at last year’s Commonwealth Youth Games.
Gallagher missed the event, and a possible showdown with her club colleague, through injury.
It was the second year in a row that hurdles specialist Porter had produced a big performance at this championships – she took the U17 300m title this time last year with an island-record-breaking performance of 39.99.
‘It was really an encouraging weekend for different reasons, because while Ala was using it as part of his progression towards the games, for Sophie it was all about achieving the goal she wanted out of the indoor season,’ said Druce.
Unfortunately, Joe Chadwick could not join the medal-winning club, even though his national ranking suggested he might.
The sprinter, 16, had looked a good bet for a medal going into the championships but a severe bout of flu in the last fortnight evidently hampered him and he bowed out at the semi-final stage having stumbled out of his lane around the final bend, having clocked 22.87 in his heat for second place.
Yet, he ends the indoor season ranked first nationally as the winning time in Sunday’s final did not better his 22.41 achieved in Glasgow last month.
Amelia Lees was, like Curtis, hampered by an unfortunate lane assignment in her 300m in Glasgow which meant she received another difficult lane draw at the nationals.
She executed a good race to lower her outright PB to 41.74 but did not progress to the final. She also contested the 200m heats, where she clocked 26.38, a little way off her very best having gone sub-26 last summer.
The youngest athlete on the team was U15 Amelia Hart.
She achieved the national entry standard in Glasgow last month but had suffered a hamstring problem less than a fortnight ago.
Although she fell short of her PB of 8.59, she did not suffer any ill-effects from the injury and will take away valuable experience.
