Montell off to a flyer

1:38pm Friday 9th May 2008

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Montell Douglas opened her Summer season in fine form at the British Universities Championships at Bedford returning with three gold medals. Representing Brunel University the Blackheath & Bromley athlete won the 200 metres by over a second and her time of 23.90 would have been quicker had she not been running into a -2.3 metre per second headwind.

Her time in her semi final of 23.60 was a new personal best and she rounded off an outstanding weekend by anchoring the 4x100 team to victory and clocking an impressive 53.8 split on her leg of the 4x400. She has won 11 British Universities medal during her time as an undergraduate at Brunel, a Brunel record.

The other Club member to win a medal at these championships was Taiwo Sodeyi. He took bronze in the 110 hurdles in 14.72 again a strong headwind militating against fast times.

Many more Club members were in action over the weekend and it was particularly pleasing to see the return to action of Loughborough University students Rebecca Syrocki and Clare Cooper, both of whom set personal bests. Rebecca timed 56.40 in the semi finals of the 400 metres and was only marginally slower in the final. Clare ran 61.61 in the final of the 400 hurdles.

Also on the comeback trail was Frances Athawes who threw 30.25 in the javelin while new member Elaine Murty timed 2.15.02 in the 800 and Higher Competition athlete Emily Martin was 6th in the long jump with 5.51.

A couple of the men just missed out on medals as Scott Huggins (4.90 Pole vault) and James Groocock (7.20 long jump) had to settle for fourth places. Alex Pope set a new best of 54.88 in the javelin and there were new pbs also in the 5000 from James Poole (15.05.49) and Andrew Conway (15.44.84). Lewis Ely equalled his best in the high jump with a leap of 1.95.