Key match for BAL team
Friday 31 July 2009
Cardiff AAC’s British League adventure moves on to Leeds tomorrow, 1st August, with the Cardiff team still sitting on top of its division.
After the first two matches of the four round series, Cardiff narrowly leads the division from Blackheath, Herne Hill and TVH. A good result at Leeds is essential to Cardiff's promotion ambitions but team manager James Williams has assembled a strong team for the encounter.
The club welcomes back David Guest, fresh from his fantastic display at the European Junior champs in Serbia but it is doubtful that the weather in Leeds will replicate the 30 degrees that David had to contend with in Serbia; staying warm will probably be a more realistic scenario for him! David competes in the long jump, pole vault and 110m hurdles and is accompanied in the pole vault by his younger brother Stephen who makes his debut for the team.
In the throws, captain for the day Dave Coleman looks to maintain his 100% record this year in the discus; his closest rival could be team mate Jake Matthews who makes his British League debut – both athletes also compete in the shot put. In the jumps, Matt Ledger, athlete of the match in Bromley, competes in the high jump and triple jump where he will be supported by Lewis Long and Gareth Wiltshire. Matt Ledger will also throw the hammer and the javelin, accompanied by Josh Williams in the latter event.
On the track, Christian Malcolm is a last minute addition to the team, competing in the 100m. He will be accompanied by the star of the season Gareth Hopkins, who will look to go faster than his 10.7 season’s best in his first British League appearance of the season. Gareth will also compete in the 200m with the returning Lloyd Reffell and both men will be looking for times under 22 seconds after flirting with the barrier all season.
Two of the club’s biggest stars compete in the 400m where Matt Elias and Gareth Warburton look to extend their winning streaks in the league this year. Not many clubs can boast as many sub 1.50 800m runners as Cardiff with no less than 7 athletes having personal bests below that barrier – in fact the club has won every race in the league this year. This looks like continuing as 1.48 man Joe Maynard and former AAA champion James Mills line up here. James Mills also runs in the 5k a few hours later. In the 1500m, local athlete Jorge Thomas runs along with Harry Jones, who will be looking to go one better than the two second place finishes so far this year.
Another athlete looking to go one better will be Chris Discombe in the steeplechase. In both fixtures so far this year, he has led from the start until the last 400 and we all hope he manages to hold on for a well deserved victory in this match. Once again he will be supported by Andy Friend, who will be having a quiet day compared to the steeplechase, 5k and 400m hurdles that he did in the last fixture.
Jamie Gutteridge and Gareth Wiltshire will compete in the 400m hurdles. This will be Gareth’s first run over the hurdles in 3 years but, with a personal best of 53.8sec, he will surely be pushing for maximum points.
The team is going into this fixture in a very positive mood and the team spirit has been shown by the likes of Joe Maynard, Matt Elias, Josh Williams, Lewis Long and more who have all offered to fill the gaps in the team. We especially welcome Christian Malcolm who mentioned that he wanted to compete for the team this year and be part of the squad atmosphere that is developing more and more. Hopefully a good performance here will set us up nicely for the last fixture with fingers crossed for a richly deserved promotion!
The position going into this match is: 1. Cardiff (12 league points) (618 event points); 2. Blackheath (12) (606); 3. Herne Hill (12) (601); 4. TVH (11) (555); 5. Harrow (10) (595); 6. Kingston & Poly (8) (527); 7. Swansea (4) (434); 8. Leeds (3) (432).