Vault Manchester 10 SportCity Saturday 16.01.10

This year’s Vault Manchester attracted 91 entrants headed up by the UK’s top vaulters Steve Lewis and Kate Dennison. The vaulters were split in to six pools with two pools vaulting at a time.

With an early start of 9:30 a.m. first up were the Intermediate vaulters. Enter the mighty trio of Laurie Needham, Matt Wright and Declan O’Hara. Declan and Matt got the competition under away with vaults of 3.73m followed by clearances at 3.93m and 4.13m. Both attempted 4.28m but lack of practice proved too much in the end. Laurie Needham, fresh from his exploits in France in the Perche Elite Tour where he cleared 4.62m, went one centimetre better. His attempts at a new PB of 4.73 weren’t quite up to the mark but things are definitely looking good for the future.

The ‘elite’ vaulters took centre stage at lunch time with the ladies’ pool being won easily by Kate Dennison with a vault of 4.40m. There was a surprise in the men’s pool, however, when Steve Lewis was edged out of first place by Kosta Filippidis of Greece with a new national record of 5.70m.

Finally it was the turn of the youngsters to show what they could do. First up was new boy David Jones in his very first competition. He did brilliantly, clearing a height of 2.23m. Tanya Wright also jumped 2.23m despite having trouble with her run up and Finn Walker just failed to get a new PB having to settle with jump of 2.63m. After a long wait, Matt Walker stepped on to the run away to record a new PB of 3.03m (though he won’t thank me for reporting that he actually cleared 3.13m only to watch agonisingly as his pole slowly fell back and knocked the bar off!).

All seven BWFAC athletes had an enjoyable day and were a credit to the club. Well done to all and a big thank you to Dave Needham and the rest of the officials for putting on such a great day.

Results

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Northern Indoors EIS Sheffield Sat/Sun 16^th/17^th January

With Vault Manchester clashing with the Northern Indoors at Sheffield there was a low turn out for the pole vault events. The level of competition was, however, extremely high in the U17 women’s competition. Paige Collins (Chesterfield) last year’s winner and English Schools 4^th place had turned out, as had Gateshead’s Kerry Maguire and our own Loryn McCrudden. Despite lying in 3^rd place for almost all the competition, a terrific vault of 2.90m by Loryn was enough to see off the opposition and win this year’s title.

Results