MARLBOROUGH & District Junior (MADJA) athletes brought back a clutch of medals from the England Athletics South West Inter County Championships at Exeter on Sunday.

Capping a superb season, U13 Thomas Holmes took double gold, winning the 75m hurdles and the javelin.

Teammate Tom Barker took bronze in the 75m hurdles, while Oli Rhoads earned silver for the high jump with a new personal best and club record of 1.50m.

New personal bests were also set at the event, Rhoads with 28.29 seconds in the 200m and Barker 8.39m in the shot and 4.38m in the long jump, as well as U15 Jay Roden in the boys’ 300m with 41.66 and in the long jump with 5.02m.

Callum Short made a clean sweep of all the regional 400m hurdles titles when he took gold at Exeter.

It is the first season at the event for Short, who has just finished his GCSEs at St John’s Academy.

He now has the Wiltshire Schools and South West Schools titles as well as taking the Wiltshire County and SW Inter-County golds.

Putting aside his disappointment at the English Schools Championships, where he fell in the 400m hurdles final, Short was the emphatic winner in Exeter with a personal best of 58.22.

The youngster has been given coaching help by 1968 Olympic 400m hurdles gold medalist David Hemery and will be Wiltshire’s representative at the English School’s Combined Events National finals at Bedford International Stadium in September.

 

GEMMA Shepherd followed up her silver medal in the English Schools’ Championships with another superb personal best in the 1500m.

Competing in the British Milers’ Club elite 1500m race in Oxford, the 17-year-old Sheldon School student from Yatesbury shaved 1.2 seconds off the time set seven days earlier with 4:24.03 for eighth.

“I am so pleased with that,” said Shepherd, who moves up to eighth in the UK rankings for U20 women.

“I wasn’t sure how I would get on after last week and I was running in the A race for the first time but it went really well.’’