After qualifying for the SCVAC League Final for the past 4 successive years, the men’s team struggled this season to place 5th overall but saved our best performance for the last match at Medway Park in Gillingham.
Ray Daniel and Tim Carter were our only winners on the night in the M60 800m and Long Jump, but they were strongly backed up by 6 other 2nd place finishes for the team to secure 2nd place on the ight, our best performance of the season.
The match kicked off in the field with the Long Jump, where Paris Hunt dropped down an age group to come 2nd in the M35 event with 4.47m. Wole Odele also placed 2nd in the M50 event, losing out by just 2cm, (4.61m) whilst Tim Carter won the M60 event with 3.91m.
The scene shifted to the track, where Neb Jovanovic was making his 2nd track appearance for the club in the 800m A-string. His previous appearance was at the League Final in 2014 when he won the Bstring 800m race to help the team on the way to becoming double champions. He started off very quickly with a first lap split of 58s and was about 15m ahead of the next athlete, but he suffered in the 2nd lap as his pace dropped significantly to a split of 68s, to finish 2nd behind the Dartford athlete in 2:06.3. Matthew Preston was comfortably second in the B string in a time of 2:14.5.
The M50 race was the most competitive of the 800s with just 2 seconds separating the top 4. Wole had a storming finish in the last 100m, but just lost out by 0.2s to the Dartford runner, ending up with a 4nd place finish in 2:21.7. Ray Daniel got a season’s best time of 2:31.9 for a comfortable win in the M60 race.
Back to the field, Paris again dropped down an age group for the heavier Discus to claim the minimum points available. Peter Wishart was 2nd in the M50 competition with a throw of 32.57m, just missing out on 1st place by 6cm.
The action shifted to the track again for the 100m races, where Neb, the only athlete in trainers, bravely took on the M35 sprinters for the A-string. As the sprinters took off on the “B” of the Bang, Neb must have started running on the “g” as the others had pulled off a 5m gap from the start, which didn’t get any bigger as he got into his running to finish in 14.0s. Stanley Thomas dropped down an age group in the B string race, to place 4th in 13.5s, narrowly missing out on 3rd place with the 3rd placed athlete recording the same time. Wole picked up another 2nd place finish in the M50 race with 13.1s.
The final event was the 4x200m relay where the quartet of Wole, Tim, Stanley and Neb did well to place 5th.
Special thanks to Pauline Boorman, Glynis Penny, David Kitcher, Barry Ferguson, Tony Wright and Richard Mann for helping to make it all happen along with all the other volunteer officials from the other competing clubs.
Full results are on the SCVAC website.
Videos of all the races, including commentary from some younger Tonbridge AC members, are available at the following links:
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