South of England Combined Events Championships, Horspath – July 29 & 30
Multi-eventer Ben Pitts finished with a silver medal in the under 20 age group at the recent South of England combined events championships held at Horspath Stadium, Oxford.
The event which was supposed to be a decathlon covering ten events over the two days was reduced to nine following problems with the pole vault equipment on day 2 which meant that none of the athletes were able to score points in that event. Ben’s total after the nine events was 5309 points, good enough to claim the silver medal behind Conrad Winter (City of Norwich), who finished exactly one hundred points in front of the AVEAC athlete. Winter is the current England national bronze medalist which puts in context just how good Ben’s performance was overall.
Ben started day 1 recording 12.21 seconds into a headwind, marginally short of his personal best. His long jump of 6.46m was also three centimetres shy of his previous best perfomance. In the shot, a ‘put’ of 9.24m was followed by a high jump of 1.91m; the best performance of the day out of the eleven strong field. Day 1 finished with a 400m time of 55.93 seconds.
Ben opened day 2 with a 110m hurdles clocking of 16.57 seconds. This was followed by a discus throw of 32.38m while in the javelin he unleashed a distance of 46.35m. With the pole vault not taking place the final event, the 1500m, was brought forward on the timetable. Ben ran intellegently and produced a personal best running under 5 minutes for the first time completing the three and three quarters laps in 4:58.15 minutes.
Next up for the talented AVEAC multi-eventer will be the English School’s Combined Events Championships on 16-17 September. Ben who is the current Midlands champion will be hoping to improve on last year’s outing when he finished eigth.
Credits
Report – Joe McColgan
Photos – Nisha Desai
Credits
Report – Joe McColgan
Photos – Nisha Desai