Ella Rush stated her 2022 outdoor campaign in fine style by achieving the qualifying standard in the Heptathlon for the World Under 20 Championships which will be held in Cali, Columbia in early August. Ella scored 5491 points surpassing the tough mark set by U.K. Athletics by ninety one points.
The two day competition took place on the 13th and 14th April at the Hilmer Lodge Stadium, Walnut, California. The meeting was designated as a World Athletics Gold Event, one step down from the Diamond League, and was part of the 62nd Annual Mount Sac Relays.
Sixteen highly ranked heptathletes took part in the seven disciplines. Overall the competition for Ella had several high points as well as some events that did not go exactly to plan. Day One started with a solid 100m Hurdles time of 14:48 just over a tenth of a second behind her lifetime best of 14:35 gaining her 912 points and putting her in 12th position. In the High Jump expecting to get close to her indoor best of 1.76m, she struggled with her run up and ended up clearing 1.69m to finish joint 7th in that discipline. She ended Day 1 on a high with a 12.73m Shot Put, the 3rd best throw in the competition, and then went on to run a blistering 24.65 in the 200m beating her previous lifetime best by exactly half a second. At the end of Day One she was lying 4th overall but knew that some of the field had their best individual events still to come on Day 2.
Conditions on Day 2 were not as favourable as Day 1 with unpredictable gusts of wind playing havoc with Long Jump run ups during the first event of the morning. A measure of how the wind affected the athletes was evidenced by the fact that almost half the jumps by all the competitors were fouls. Ella managed one legal jump out of three with a 5.98m effort in the second round. The distance was the second furthest of the morning, two centimetres behind the leading jump.
The wind continued to play havoc in the Javelin. With only three throws allowed, Ella’s first two attempts were deemed to be ‘no throws’, the tip of the Javelin not striking the ground first, putting pressure on her to produce a legal effort in the final effort. She threw safely and managed a throw of 25.29m almost seven metres behind her personal best. With a lower than expected points score it meant that she would need to run around 2:22 in the final 800m if she was going to achieve the 5,400 points qualification standard.
With all the field of 15 lining up for the final event, it meant that she would have to run smartly and avoid any pushing and barging that could happen with such large numbers in the race. She ran tactically well, stayed out of trouble, and produced a lifetime best run of 2:16:08, to finish 5th in the race. Her time gained her 878 points and meant that her final score had surpassed the UKA standard for the World Championships.
Ella finished 7th overall and had it not been for a mediocre High Jump and disappointing Javelin throw, she could well have been pushing for a top three spot. Seldom do all seven events go to plan in a Heptathlon and on reflection, she can be justly proud of her achievement. Her final tally of 5491 points beat her previous PB by 121 points set last September when winning the Senior English School’s title. Ella who has also achieved the U.K. World Standard in the Long Jump will now be hoping that the G.B. Selectors will look favourably on her performances and select her for the global championships in August.
Words and photo – J McColgan