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Medals galore for Lewes AC at the Sussex Road Relay Championships
Moving on from the club’s successes in the winter cross country season the club has started the summer season with the best team results at the Sussex County Road Relay Championships since the club was founded way back in 1984.
The first to mention must be the home grown talents of the Lewes AC senior men’s team of six who claimed the bronze medal behind Phoenix AC and Brighton and Hove City AC. Sam Bennett gave the team a tremendous start by leading the whole field of 16 teams to hand over in first place to Josh Burgess in a time for the two and a bit mile course in a time of 9mins 47secs. Josh held on to finish his lap in 10mins 17sec followed by Tim Calliafas with a lap of 11mins 02sec and Ben Savill with a time of 11mins 17sec. At this point the team were lying forth about 90 metres behind Hastings AC who were in the bronze medal position. It was now up to the Bradford Brothers to see what they could do. David in his lap of 10mins.29secs managed to make up the 90 metres over the Hastings runner and handed over to his brother Matt for the last lap. It was then neck and neck with the last Hastings runner. Matt having said he wanted to run the glory lap had to work hard for the glory. Both runners played cat and mouse with each other over the first two miles and it was only over the last 200m that Matt pulled away for his own personal glory and that of the team. Congratulation to the senior men’s team the first medal in that category for Lewes AC since 1984.
The men’s Senior men’s B team finished a very creditable 11th out of the competing 16 teams from across Sussex.
Lower down the age groups and in the first event were the under13 boys team who in a field of 18 teams claimed the silver medal behind Brighton. The team were Ben Walters who led off on a shorter lap than the senior men with a time of 6mins 25secs. Next was Jasper Baker (6mins 40secs) and Ben Martin (6mins 19secs) Not only did the Lewes under 13 team win the silver medal but Ben Martin’s lap time was equal second of all the competitors.
Moving up an age group the under 15 boys teams did better in their age group than both the senior men and the under 13 boys teams by claiming both gold and silver team medals. Claiming the gold medal were Aiden Briffett who’s lap time of 5mins 54secs was second fastest of all under 15 boys, Connor Sullivan (6mins 11secs) James Martin (6mins 22secs) Close behind the Lewes A team by only 10 seconds were the Lewes B team of Tom Lambert (6mins 12secs) Mark Strong (6mins 11secs) and Sam Jackson (6mins 14secs)
Not to be outdone in the medal count the women’s over 50 team secured silver medals just behind the Arena 80 team. Karin Divall led off the team with a lap time of 13mins 42secs which also secured Karin the second fastest time of the day behind a Chichester runner. Next off was Carolyn Bennett (Yes mother of Sam so it must be in the genes) in a time of 14mins 20secs followed by the third team member Andrea Ingram in a time of 15mins 36sec.
Lewes AC had a stack of other teams supporting the medal winning teams with the three senior women’s teams finishing in 9th, 18th and 20th out of 21 teams. The under15 girls team finished in 9th position in their age group and the under 13 girls teams finished 8th and 15th in their age category with the under 13 boys B team finishing in 16th position in their category.