Northern Bronze at England Champs for Lucy
In the U20 Women’s Heptathlon, at the England Athletics Combined Events Championships, Lucy Chappell turned in a PB performance to finish sixth overall but with a Northern Bronze medal.
Lucy started the weekend with a solid hurdles time of 15.28 secs putting her 5th overall after the first event.
She had a great High Jump competition with the overall winner of the Heptathlon, Emma Canning of Scotland, with them both clearing a height of 1.70m. Lucy got the bragging rights though by clearing all of them at first attempt. Both athletes attempted 1.73m and Lucy got very close to clearing this as well. After this 2nd event, Lucy was leading the competition overall.
The third event, the Shot Putt, is never a favourite of Lucy’s and unfortunately she failed to replicate the standard that she had been achieving in training, throwing a consistent, but slightly disappointing, 8.28m on two occasions. This resulted in her dropping down to 7th place overall.
The final event of the day was the 200m and a head wind resulted in most of the field turning in relatively slow times. Lucy ran it in a time of 27.33secs and ended day 1 in 7th place.
Day 2 started with the Long Jump and Lucy came out firing on all cylinders with an opening jump of 5.33m which was a PB for her in an Heptathlon. This was the 5th best recorded jump on the day and moved her up to fifth in the overall standings.
The next event, the Javelin, is another one that Lucy struggles with a bit, and sure enough her best throw of 24.49 was only 13th best but she still managed to hold onto her 5th place in the completion.
Finally it was time to grit her teeth and endure the 800m. In a spirited race, Lucy managed to stay with the pack in fastest heat, and ran race finishing with a PB time of 02:29.49.
She finished the overall competition with a score of 4,485 points and less than 300 points cover the top 6 athletes in this closely fought Heptathlon.
Andy Davies
