British Sprint Championships 2024
Last weekend, 9 QOs made the trip to the midlands to take part in the British Sprint Championships at The University of Warwick.
Each age category had a qualifier in the morning, with start times determined by BOF rankings, followed by either an A or B final in the afternoon. The qualifier covered the halls of residences and a more remote part of campus for the longer courses. The finals, which had to be shortened last minute due to an occupation of a university building, went into the centre of campus.
Bee, M12, fell foul of the large numbers of similar placed controls and struggled early on mis-punching control 2 and 4, but persevered to still finish the qualification race. He preferred the central campus area of the final – for which he was non-competitive.
Finley, M14, had a great first race – coming 4th, just 34 seconds behind the leader and comfortably qualifying for the A final. Against fierce competition, he finished 4th, just missing out on a podium.
Ollie, M16, was disappointed with his first race – coming 19th just ahead of local SWOA competition. In the B final, he came 5th and was fastest on several legs.
On M45, Mark outclassed Phil in the qualifier – finishing 12th and qualifying for the A final. Phil, after a moment of distraction mis-punched the next control. In the finals, Mark just missed out on a Championship award coming 17th, and Phil had a better run (albeit now non-competitive).
Steve (M70), who had a nearly clean run, and Tony (M75) both qualified for the A final, coming 12th and 18th respectively. Steve got up to 7th in the final (Gold award) and Tony 11th (Silver award).
Annabel took on the M18 course and finished 10th in the qualifier and 3rd in the B final.
Dylan (M10) finished 2nd place on Yellow in the qualifier, and then found more speed to win the Yellow final in a time of 10:09 (which would have won him M10).
Here is Phil’s view of the event:
After a slight panic the qualifier was going to be a forest sprint, I enjoyed the first part of the qualifier in the far campus but I was just not fast enough especially with a longer running leg. After almost literally bumping into Bee, I lost concentration and mis-punched a more visible control just before mine (check your control description).
Although officially non-competitive after the-mis punch, I had a better final with a fantastic start, leading the field to control 2 and only being a few seconds behind at control 3. Unfortunately I made a poor route choice to 4, losing half a minute and flagged towards the end, but I would have only been 30s behind the winner (if I had been legitimately in the final!)
Results: https://www.sportident.co.uk/results/BOC/2024/BritishSprint/
Routegadget: https://www.boc.routegadget.co...
On the Saturday it was the British Sprint Relay Championships, held at The University of Birmingham. Phil and Ollie formed an adhoc team with Bethan from SBOC, the aptly name ‘Swantocks’ and came a respectable 9th.