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Make no bones about it - skeleton crew of athletes were great
With many of the club's athletes competing elsewhere, Chichester sent a skeleton team of four to Cornwall for a Men's Southern League fixture.
Undeterred by the long journey to the Par track, home of Newquay and Par, the quartet covered 27 events to amass 72 points.
Showing good form as they have all season were the club's throwers, Tim Brown and Rob Bourne, who, after starting with two second places in the hammer, scored nine out of ten in the shot.
Bourne was close to his personal best in the javelin at just under 40m while Brown was top in the discus.
The duo then filled in gaps in other events, with Brown turning his hand to hurdles and pole vault while Bourne tackled three races and three jumps to give him a magnificent 27 points from ten events.
The other two members of the team had been part of the club's winning team at the Lavant Midsummer five-mile road race three days earlier, but that did not stop Chris West and Tony Roddis playing their part.
After the B-string high jump and triple jump, West tackled the 400m and 800m before running the 1,500m in a swift 4min 24.3sec then the 3,000m steeplechase in 10.45.4, the latter two both personal-best times.
Roddis was in the middle of a five-day sequence of three events for the club.
Having entered the veteran ranks earlier in the month, he had scooped the vets prize in the Lavant road race on Wednesday and was to take part in the Middleton beach run on the Sunday.
Rather than tackle the longer events at Par, Roddis put in some useful times in the sprints and set a personal best in the 800m with a good time of 2.22.2.
With a stronger squad available, Chichester look forward to their next league match at the Thames Valley Athletics Centre, Eton, on July 11.
n In the English Schools regional combined events championships at Kingston, three of Chichester's top multi-eventers were part of a strong Sussex squad.
They produced fine performances in a Sussex victory.
Pride of place went to Charlie Roe, who overcame injury worries and produced a grade-one score of 5,335 points for the decathlon for sixth place. He is now part of the winning Sussex team which will go to the national finals in September.
As well as improvements in the shot, discus and javelin, normally his weakest events, Roe produced a breakthrough jump of 6.36m in the long jump which puts him at number three on the club's all-time list.
Isobel Brown was unlucky to miss out on a top-six place which would have given her an invitation to the national finals, but she showed a big improvement on her personal best with 2,474 points, 26 short of
her aim of reaching 2,500.
Brown's fighting qualities were summed up by her performance in the 800m, where she dipped under 2.40 for the first time in a pentathlon, less than three seconds outside her best ever for the individual event.
George Grainger battled to overcome the worst possible start to claw back from 23rd after three events to 16th.
The first event in the under-17 octathlon is the long jump – one of Grainger's best events – but after missing his run-up and stride pattern in his first couple of attempts, he had to settle for a mark of more than a metre below his best.
That left him having to play catch-up. But he refused to give up and did just that.
PHIL BAKER
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Weather for Chichester
Tuesday 29 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 13 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 20 mph
Wind direction: West
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 13 C to 20 C
Wind Speed: 18 mph
Wind direction: South west
