Veteran’s League Meeting at Tipton 10^th August, 2005

Results of 4th Vets.League at Tipton on 10th August,2005

The twin objectives for this meeting were to beat Bromsgrove and Redditch in  the women’s section and for the men to beat Sparkhill. A weak Sparkhill team meant the latter objective was very comfortably achieved, but B & R fielded a very strong team including former double world champion Bronwen Cardy so another exciting contest was guaranteed.

            Julie was involved in the first three events and won them all, the 200m,triple jump and javelin. Ann won the B 200 and was third in the W45 800 whilst Hilary was second in the W50 200. A very good start, but we were to win only two more events with no more second place points. Emma  was third in the 800 B race, and followed this with fourth in the A 3000, a placing matched by  Karen and Hilary B. in their 3000’s. Karen had earlier finished third in the one mile walk, and Hilary Davies, even though she has not been training, agreed to do the W50 walk and won four precious points. Carol Rafferty won the W50 javelin and was fourth in the W45 discus. This left only the 4 X 400 relay for which half the team were “fresh” from the 3000 and all had done at least two events previously. Emma ran first and Hilary B. second. Both competed well and handed over to Julie in fourth place. Julie scorched round the track and took the lead after about 200m, handing on to Ann forty metres up. Ann crossed the line nearly eighty metres ahead to clinch another nine points. Was it enough?

            When I received the pre-scrutiny results I had a shock. The team scores of Birchfield and B & R were equal. One match point less and we would not be champions since we would have tied on league points and lost on total match points. It could not have been closer, but we won.

            We managed to win only three men’s events. Warren in the 200, Dave in the B walk and Gordon in the M60 3000 all won, but Allan was second in the M60 200, as were Windel and John in their 800m races. Our fourth second place was in the 4 X 400 where Windel pretended to be Julie for the last leg and moved from fourth to second after Warren on the second leg had largely counteracted the drag of two old timers on first and third stages. Parminder in the A walk and Windel in the long jump were third. Mike ran ten seconds faster than his previous 3000m, but was in a fast race and finished fifth. The ever reliable Brian struggled with a foot injury during his 3000 and Wilf limped most of his 200m after one of the old war wounds in his hamstring objected to being put under strain. On the field Chris, Allan and Warren all finished fourth in the M50 discus, the M50 long jump and M40 shot respectively. We had two debutant javelin throwers, Peter Boszko in the M40 and Chris in the M60, who both placed fifth. All these results gave us a very useful 119 points, a long way behind Worcester, but almost double Sparkhill’s total and enough to secure second place in the league.  

            Well done to all, especially the women on becoming champions. Thanks to our official Teresa, Tom our guest runner and our supporters who encouraged our efforts. 

            There is just the cup final at Worcester on Saturday 3^rd September to come. Most teams will be weakened because of the world championships in Spain, so we have good chance to do well.

 Robin