Guy Butler Shield (Harrow)
There were plenty of spirited performances during the first major competition of the season at Harrow where the SPS team finished in 6th place overall. There were individual wins for Sol Inglis (senior 110m hurdles A string) in a PB of 15.90s, Cam McConnon (Lower Eighth) (senior 1500m B string) in 4:23 on his comeback from injury and Louis Nuthall (Sixth Form) (inter high jump A string) with a leap of 1m70. Also of note was Charlie Pama’s (Sixth Form) second place in a high quality inter boys shot put with an English Schools’ qualifying distance of 13m32.
U18 European 2000m Steeplechase qualifier (Bury St Edmunds)
Benjy Street (Lower Eighth) was in action, finishing second in a time of 6mins 14.02 seconds, putting him third on the GB U20 rankings for the year (albeit over slightly lower barriers) and very close to the school record of 6:08 which dates back to 1978. It also qualifies him for the English Schools Championships in July.
Achilles Relays (Oxford)
Under some rather grey Oxford skies the St Paul’s athletes really set the track alight with some fantastic running at the Achilles Relays this afternoon.
The junior boys’ 4x100m squad of John Gunn, Ethan Piric, Zac Lam and Luke Gleason set the tone for the day by qualifying for the final with a fine run in the heats before improving by over a second to take silver in the final, pushing the winners to a new record in process. Their time of 47.0 took a tenth of a second off the previous school record. The same quartet also went on to finish 3rd in the 4x200m relay later in the afternoon to cap off an excellent day’s work.
The junior boys’ 4x800m relay team of Kai Trench, Joachim Strabo, Alfred Chen and Leau Roch left everything out on the track with each runner giving their absolute all to finish 3rd in a competitive final consisting of 11 teams with excellent pedigree. Despite a really gutsy final leg run from Leau Roch, taking the team from 5th to 2nd in the first lap, he eventually had to yield to a strong finish from the ACS runner but held on valiantly for bronze in a brilliant time of 2:11.
However, the highlight of the day from an SPS perspective was undoubtedly the senior 4x800m relay where Edward Trotman, Cam McConnon, Benjy Street and athletics captain Max Bishop blew the field (and the school record) to smithereens. Edward got the team off to a good start, Cam moved up through the field, Benjy broke 2 minutes for the first time to pull the team into the lead before Max put the icing on the cake, running well under 2 minutes, to anchor the team to a stunning victory in a time of 8:15.0 taking more than 6 seconds off the school record in the process. As a result they win the Chris Chataway Trophy for (what I suspect may be?) the first time. A truly wonderful result celebrated by the whole team and a number of OP athletes who had come out to watch.
Written by Adrian Hemery, Head of Athletics and Teacher of Mathematics