A ‘mighty’ England
ENGLAND ATHLETICS have announced their impressive under-20 squad for Saturday’s Intertrust Athletics Games which looks set to be one of Footes Lane’s grandest ever track and field events.
The 30-athlete list includes no shortage of national level athletes and, in addition to a host of other visiting talent, will make for hugely compelling competition come Saturday.
The level of competition is such that it has drawn Guernsey’s Bath University based 400m ace Cam Chalmers to compete on local soil for the first time since 2015.
Chalmers’ 45.64sec. best gives him the jump over the confirmed England juniors, these being 47.20 runner Alex Haydock-Wilson and 47.42 runner Charles Hilliard, as Dale Garland’s all-comers’ record of 46.5sec. comes under fire from both Chalmers and previously-announced English athlete Sadam Koumi.
It is now 11 years since Garland set his all-comers’ best, but given good conditions this weekend Chalmers will be tipped to beat it. After all, he now has a PB nearly a full second inside the Olympian’s best.
Meanwhile, Alastair Chalmers renews battle with England’s Seamus Derbyshire who took bronze behind the Sarnian in the national under-20 400m hurdles in Bedford last weekend.
The Chalmers brothers may well be our trump cards against the national squad, which is very well-represented across the full spectrum of disciplines and will be a tough ask for even Guernsey’s top athletes.
The men’s 800m will be potentially spectacular, as national indoor champion William Crisp arrives with two recent sub-1-52 clockings to his name and will be joined by three other top English juniors.
The English men’s sprint squad will be spearheaded by Southern 100m champion Brandon Mingeli (a 10.52 man) and Northern 200m champion William Hughes, while current British under-20 100m hurdles lead Anastasia Davies and distinguished under-17 100m runner Amy Hunt, who holds a 11.63 best, are the best of a talented women’s bunch.
The off-track action will be headlined by high jumper Abby Ward, who recorded a British-leading 1.84m this season and looks set to shatter the all-comers’ record of 1.67m, while fellow juniors Samuel Challis and Eleanor Broome will threaten the men’s and women’s long jump records.
‘The sprints in general look to be very well-filled which is going to be very exciting and the girls’ high jump also looks extremely good – we’ve been trying to look at the field events recently and there are going to be some big performances there,’ said meet organiser Tom Druce.
