While top sprinter Rechmial Miller was showing good early season form in the Loughborough International Meeting, his Hercules Wimbledon clubmates were consolidating their position at the top of their Southern League division with another convincing win at their Wimbledon Park track headquarters, writes Tom Pollak.

Meanwhile, fresh from her triumph in the Surrey championships the previous weekend, one of the club’s youngest athletes, Mabel-Rose Scales, strengthened her position at the top of this season’s UK girls under 13 high jump rankings, with a personal best winning clearance at the English Schools Cup first round match at Linford Christie Stadium, East Acton, of 1.57 metres. She also competed in the 200m where she was second in 28.3 seconds, improving by a second on her previous best time and helping Putney High School win the match and qualify for the junior girls semi-final.

Miller made a strong start to his season at Loughborough winning his 200m race in 21.31 seconds into a slight headwind after earlier finishing fourth in his 100m race in 10.46. His performances rank him fifth and fourth, respectively, in this season’s UK under 23 rankings. Both his times were not far off his personal bests of 10.33 and 20.85.

Competing in unseasonably rainy conditions, Hercules Wimbledon’s athletes dominated their home Southern Athletics League match to boost their aim of gaining promotion at the end of the season.

Richmond and Twickenham Times:

The club gained a host of wins with Charlie Eastaugh and Dominic Bokor-Ingram and Emilie Bokor-Ingtram and Rebekah Riches taking both the men’s and women’s 400m A and B races. Riches also took the women’s 800m while Sean Hall and Ross Franks gained maximum points in the men’s 800m A and B events with both runners clocking inside two minutes. Franks then linked up with teenager Henry Silverstein to gain maximum points in the 1500m. Clair Grima was just pipped in the women’s 1500m A race with Lisa Thomas taking the B race.

Later, Grima won the 3000m with Gina Galbraith taking the B race. The men emulated this performance with Finn Johnson and Jonny Earl taking the A and B races. Fred Slemeck and Keith Scofield took both the men’s A and B 3000m steeplechase races while Ellen Weir and Lisa Thomas secured maximum points in the women’s steeplechase.

Best of the field events competitors was veteran Swede Christer Hagberg making his debut for Hercules Wimbledon. He gained a hat-trick of wins in the shot, discus and hammer with throws of 45.07, 40.91 and 12.46 metres, respectively. Sam Hitchings won the hammer and shot B with 38.07 and 10.66m while Mark Andrews took the discus B with 27.05m.

Hercules Wimbledon ended the day by winning both mixed 4x400m relay races with Rebekah Riches, Pete McLeod, Rebecca Afriyia, Olivia Drigui, Edward Newton, Charlie Eastaugh, Freddie Slemeck and Lisa Thomas making up the two teams.

Match result: 1 Hercules Wimbledon 250pts; 2 St Mary’s Richmond 194; 3 East Grinstead 114; 4 London City 100.

Hercules Wimbledon supervet Tom Cheetham faced a challenging race in Essex on Saturday when he competed in the Paras 10 miles multi-terrain event. The course was over army training grounds in Colchester and involved crossing streams and overcoming various obstacles as well as carrying a rucksack weighing 35 pounds! Cheetham finished 93rd out of almost 600 competitors and was seventh in the over 50 category.

Henry Silverstein warmed up for Sunday’s track meeting where he won the 1500m B race by winning the Wimbledon Common parkrun on Saturday, heading home a 616-strong field. He clocked a personal best 16:49 to slice nine seconds off his previous best set a month earlier. Clubmate David Grima was third in 17:50.