Middlesex Cross Country Champs, Wormwood Scrubs 4th January 2020

TVH hosted the Middlesex cross country championships at a muddy Wormwood Scrubs on 4th January. The highlight of the day was a team win for the TVH Women’s team, with all 4 athletes in the scoring team finishing in the top 10 in the 8km race; Izzy Dye 3rd, Lisa da Silva 5th, Stephanie Ainley 9th and Chloe Baker 10th.  The U20 Women also won the team event over 6km with Charlotte Buckley 2nd, Izzy Franco 3rd and Jasmine Gray 5th     

Our men’s team competing over 12km finished 3rd  led home by Oli Newton and  TVH had a successful day in the young athletes races winning silver team medals in the Under 13 Girls and Under 17 Men’s events and bronze in the Under 15 Girls.

Starting the day off for the Valley, our only competitor in the Under 11 Girls race was 9 year old Xanthe Greenfields who had a very good run to finish 26th over the 1.5km course. Next up were the Under 13 Boys running one full lap of the Scrubs. Reggie Rock is a first year runner in this age group and ran very well to finish 10th in the field of 42. Archie Smith finished 31st in his first county championships.

We had high hopes of winning medals in the Under 13 Girls 3km race even though several of our girls were still away on holiday. Those who were there ran magnificently to gain second place to Highgate. Molly McCormack and Ava Levy came in together to get fourth and fifth places. They were well backed up by Skye Bishop in 13th place who was unwell. With Anna Kelly also having a good run to finish 14th it’s a pity for her that it wasn’t four to score in this race as they would have won it easily. Katerina Simakova was also close behind in 18th place which meant that all the TVH girls were in the top half of the field of 48.

The Under 15 Boys 4k was a disappointment for the Valley with Morris Rock finishing 20th and Dominic Johnson finishing 27th as our only two finishers.

Third team medals for the Under 15 Girls was another bonus for the club. With Zenia Gordon having a great race to finish 10th ahead of Charlotte Edge, 13th, and Angel Acheampong, 14th, was proving my belief that she is a good cross country runner. They were only five points behind second place. Olivia Sparks also ran well for her 18th place as did Thea Almqvist-Dutton 21st and Sasha Mueller 23rd.

Unfortunately we didn’t have a team finishing in the Under 17 Women’s 6km race. Jasmine Palmer decided to run although troubled by a foot problem and did well to finish in 6th place.  Olivia Colgrave cut short her holiday for this race but  being short of training finished 20th.

The most surprising result came in the Under 17 Men’s race where TVH came away with silver medals. Beating SBH by four points for their second place. Louis Moore, a first year u17 had a great run to finish seventh and Daniel Benton also ran well for 11th place. Having his best race of the season Shami Umashankar was a remarkable 14th. Basil Rock was overshadowed by Shami but still had a good run to finish 20th out of the 33 finishers.

Full results at :    https://www.thepowerof10.info/results/results.aspx?meetingid=317737