Wood stars with four wins despite the weather

Mar 31 2008 The Journal

THE wet and windy conditions hit performances at Saturday’s Cyril Elliott meeting at Middlesbrough, which opened the track and field season.

Middlesbrough’s Ashleigh Wood continued her fine form from the indoor season, winning the Under-17s 100m, 80m hurdles, high jump and long jump.

In the 80m hurdles, Joss Harwood – who recently won the World Masters Indoor Over-50s 60m hurdles title in a European record time of 9.62secs – was just three-tenths of a second outside the British record for the outdoor distance.

The best performances were in throwing events. English Schools junior discus champion from 2006, Tyne Breen of Blaydon won the Under-17s shot and discus. Lisa-Marie Shippen of Gateshead won the senior women’s hammer and MIddlesbrough’s Kayleigh Mills won the Under-17s competition. Andrew Smith of Gateshead won the senior men’s event. Darlington’s Paul Clifford won the Under-17s 800m, while Rob Patton of Chester-le-Street the senior 200m.

KENENISA Bekele overcame the loss of a shoe early in the race to prove himself the world’s greatest cross-country runner as he won a record sixth long course championship title in Edinburgh yesterday. Bekele was expected to move ahead of the five victories of Kenyan legends John Ngugi and Paul Tergat in Mombasa last year until a stomach upset saw him drop out and surrender his dominance of the gold medal to Eritrea’s Zersenay Tadese.

He vowed he would put the record straight and despite suffering the loss of his shoe coming off when brushed by a Kenyan opponent five minutes into the 12-kilometre contest, the 25-year-old Ethiopian left his rivals behind over the final circuit.

Bekele, who stopped to put his shoe back on, pulled clear of Leonard Komon and he had a three-second winning margin.