University of Birmingham will go into this weekend’s BUCS Athletics Championships with a head-start.
The men’s and women’s 10,000m races, normally part of the BUCS Athletics Championship weekend, were held last weekend at Loughborough University and the Birmingham contingent did fantastically well.
Toby Cooke took an emphatic victory in the men’s race overhauling a 100m deficit at half-way to his Loughborough and Cardiff Met rivals, winning in a new PB of 30.13.
Emma Houchell led the majority of the women’s race and in a tough field came away with an incredible Bronze medal backed up by first year, Louisa Whittingham in 6th, who also picked up team points for the University.
This weekend the team travels to Bedford for the BUCS Athletics team championships and is looking to add to its indoor medal haul. With such a strong team going and with last week’s win fresh in our minds, we hope to see a lot of successes, but here’s a few to watch [with scheduled date and time of final so you can keep an eye out for them]…
Jake Porter, reigning BUCS Indoor 60m Hurdles champ looks to improve on his Silver medal in these championships last year over the 110m hurdles. [Mon 7th, 15:05]
Mari Smith, reigning champion over 1500m last year, will take on the field over 800m this year and recently defeated the 2017 champion, Jess Judd from Loughborough (by 3 seconds), this past weekend in her warm-up race! [Mon 7th, 12:50]
Jonathan Davies, who has never lost a BUCS track championship race, winning the 1500m last year, will this year return to his more favoured 5000m, at which he won World University Silver last summer. He will be looking to find his third BUCS title but will face incredibly stiff competition, as the race looks set to be the ‘must watch’ of the championship! [Mon 7th, 10:10]
We also have great medal shouts from:
Megan Davies (1500m) [Mon 7th, 15:15]
Sam Milner (Discus & Shot Putt) [Mon 7th, 12:10 & 14:30]
Lizzie Clifford (400m Hurdles) [Mon 7th, 10:45]
Patrick Taylor (800m) [Mon 7th, 12:40]
Women’s 4x100m [Mon 7th, 15:35]
Men’s 4x400m relays [Mon 7th, 16:05]
So a huge good luck to everyone competing – we’ll be cheering you on!