Eastbourne Rovers Athletic club Senior Men’s 4x100m relay team were excited to be invited to the National Relay Championships held at the Alexander stadium in Birmingham. Here teams from the top clubs in the country met to compete in the 4x100m, 4x300m and 4x400m relay events.
Eastbourne knew they would have to perform at their very best to stand a chance of being in medal contention and so had been practicing the changeovers to perfection.
On the first leg was Nathan Burge. He was the youngest competitor in this race being only 15 against all the seniors. Nathan blasted out of the blocks and held the stagger round the bend for a slick changeover with Dylan Brudenell. Dylanglided down the back straight gaining ground all the time.
It was then the turn of Honest Chinengundu, who ran a fantastic bend to pass to the anchor leg and Sussex sprint champion Bryn Smith.
Thames Valley had a clear lead but Bryn battled down the home straight just behind Sheffield to take 3rd place. Eastbourne’s training had paid off as they made no mistakes in passing the baton and had sprinted their way to the grabbing the bronze medals in a new club record of 41.80 secs. A brilliant achievement.
Having travelled all the way to Birmingham the team also managed to get a lane in the 4x400m Senior relay final. This time it was Oscar Mizen ( U17)who led the team on the first lap. He could still remember walking out onto the Alexander Stadium when he competed at the English Schools Championships earlier in the year. Oscar was up against some very strong 400m runners but did not panic and ran his own well paced race to keep in contention. Bryn then took charge and again went off fast and held on down the home straight tothen give the baton to Nathan. The winning 3 teams had pulled away by this time so Nathan paced himself to come in with a strong finish. Anchor man Dylan knew that another club record was on the cards so produced a fine finishing leg. The team crossed the line in 7th place in 3m27.6 just a second shy of breaking the record but another great result.
Eastbourne Rovers U15 boys 4x100m team were also invited to the Championships . Jesse Ogonedum, Aiden Pringle, Aaron Goldsmith and Daniel Suarez Biberle are unbeaten in Sussex this season and ranked 14th in the country. Unfortunately, 2 of the athletes were on holiday and the team had not had a chance to practice so they missed out this year but hopefully will get another chance in the future.
Sprint coach Sue Keen said this was a fitting finale to a brilliant season for all the athletes.
