Cross Country and Athletics

On a beautiful day in Richmond Park, the Richmond cross country championships, twice postponed, finally took place on Friday. Ten runners participated, aiming to secure qualification for the Middlesex championships scheduled at Harrow on 6 February.

Leau Roch (Fourth Form) led the way in the junior race, finishing fifth, securing automatic qualification, with Max Williams (Fourth Form) narrowly missing out in tenth. In the senior race, Max Bishop (Upper Eighth) showed that his comeback is going well with a strong second place finish. Thomas Homes (Upper Eighth) also secured his place on the team for Harrow finishing fifth with SPS also taking tenth and 11th via Hamish Chapple (Upper Eighth) and Armaan Mathur (Lower Eighth) respectively.

Saturday saw the South of England XC championships taking place in Beckenham with Benjy Street (Lower Eighth) taking a highly impressive tenth place in the U20 race and Leau (in his second race in as many days) finishing 29th in the U15 competition. At the same time, several SPS athletes travelled to Lee Valley to participate in the London Indoor Games. The first meet of a busy indoor season. Chris Garagnon (Sixth Form) was in fine form improving his 800m PB by two seconds with 2:14, with Owen Xu (Fifth Form) close behind him with 2:18. Huge congratulations to all the athletes.