Ale is Swedish champ.

Thursday 24 February 2011

Alessandra Wall, who is Swedish and is now back in Sweden, lived in Wales for two years a couple of years ago, joined Cardiff A.A.C. and competed for the club's Young Athletes' League team.

Ale (pictured during the competition) has just hit the headlines in Sweden by winning the national indoor "hammer throwing" championship in Stockholm.

The Swedish Athletics Association has introduced "weight throwing" (a sort of indoor hammer throw) for the categories of juniors and youth into the National Championship and this year’s Championship was the first time for this event. Alessandra was part of this "historical" happening and as it says on the Swedish National Athletic webpage:

“The most sensational victory came by Alessandra Wall (Ullevi FK) in weight throwing for girls 16 where she won the gold medal. Ale improved her PB with 117 cm during the competition, winning by throwing 14.43m (second was 13.47m). Ale had been in bed since Monday sick, but with a big effort she went on the bus on Friday that took the teams from Gothenburg to Stockholm to compete for the youth and junior championships.

Alessandra has only being doing the hammer for 2 years, and it was the first year she also trained this discipline during the winter."

Whilst living in Cardiff, Alessandra first joined the TRACK RATS then moved on to train with David Hawthorn’s jumps group and sprint training with Peter Lane. Alessandra returned to the U.K. for a holiday last summer and her family timed it so that she could compete for C.A.A.C. teams in the summer. Alessandra is now training for hammer throwing.

Congratulations to our latest ‘Gold Medalist’ and we look forward to the summer, when Ale may well be joining us again.

(Perhaps U.K. and Welsh Athletics could look at this innovation in Sweden with a view to trying it our here, we are certainly going to follow this up for TRACK RATS and our club throwers.).

Thanks to Dave Hawthorn for providing this article.