Press Report 21st June 2016  

Essex Schools
George Jumps to EssexSchools Gold and top ranking in the country

Ilford’s young athletes had 4 representatives at the Essex Schools champs , held at Chelmsford on Saturday June 11th All 4 athletes competed to an extraordinary high level and showed how much progress they have all made in their short athletics career to date.
All rounder Anthony George was chosen to compete in the Triple Jump very late in the day and after a few training sessions, jumped to win Gold in the u15s Age group in 12.38m. To add to Anthony achievements , his jump on the day pushed him to the highest ranked Triple jumper in the country and will be making his way to the English Schools, representing Essex ,as one of the favourites for Gold.
Jordan Hinds continued her constant improvement over 800m by breaking her personal best again by a massive 6 seconds. Jordan has improved over 25 seconds in the last year over this distance and ran a superb performance to win her first Essex medal by coming home second in 2.20 in a very classy field. Jordan is now only 5 seconds behind the Ilford AC club record and has another year in this age group
Mungo Prior ran in the u15s 1500m and ran 2 big Personal bests in the heat and final of 4.32 and 4.31 respectively. Mungo competing against a very high quality field was unlucky to finish in the dreaded 4th place and just missed out from a deserving bronze medal.
Finally Farris Patel ran in the u15s 800 and ran a very comfortable heat in 2.13 to qualify into the final but found the final very tough, to run a very respectable time of 2.11, 2 seconds off his best from the previous week. Farris still has a year left in this age group so will come back much stronger next year.

Southern League Match 3
Superman Sam
In the third round of Southern League matches held atWoodford last Saturday, Ilford achieved their highest points score of season,but unfortunately this was still only good enough for 5th place.Despite finishing 5th there were some great performances and the team manager is optimistic about the future.
Star man for Ilford was Sam Malekout, who has just recently rejoined Ilford, but threw him into the match, by taking part in 8 events and amassing almost 30 points. Sam’s day started off with the Shot and High Jump, where he took two 4th places. He then decided to have a rest from throwing and jumping to take to the track in the 100m and 800m, with a 3rd in the 100m and a 4th in the 800m. Next up was back to the throws and his favourite event the Javelin where he threw 44.66 which is his furthest throw since 2010.Next up was another 4th place in discus. Finally he did both long and triple jump taking 3rd in the long and 5th in the triple.

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Temi Adeshon in only his second race for came 3rd in the 100m in a time of 12.30 into a strong headwind, he followed this with a rare outing over 200m where he came 5th in a time of 25.00.
Sam Rahman and Neil Crisp, both had great runs in the 5000m,recording times of 17.00.7 for Sam which give him 2nd in the A string and 18.10.4 for Neil for 3rd in the B string. Bradley Brown also ran as a non scorer and recorded a time of19.36.5. Thirty minutes later Neil and Sam were back on the track for the 1500m gaining more value points with Sam taking 2nd place in the A string with 4.42.5 and Neil 3rd in the B string with 5.28.9.
The final member of the mens team was Pete Whiting, who firstly arrived at the venue one week early and then on match day was an hour late. However he made up for this by competing in almost as many events as Sam,gaining a 5th in the Long jump and a 4th in the Triple Jump. Followed by 4th in the Discus, 3rd in the Javelin and 5th in the Hammer.
The womens side only had 5 athletes but they all performed brilliantly. Kelly Mavididi back from University looked really good in winning the A string 400m in a time of 62.10 and followed this up with a seasons best of 27.96 in taking 3rd place in the A string 200m. Jordan Hinds had a rest from her usual event this week and ran in the 400m where she won the B string in 65.34 and a never before outing over 200m where she came 3rd in the B string in a time of 29.57.
Nicola Hopkinson turned up to officiate and have a beer and despite never having thrown anything other than temper, proceeded to do the shot, Javelin and discus. Where she came 5th in the shot and discus and 4th in the Javelin.I have been sworn to secrecy as to the distances, but they will be on power of 10 soon.
The final events of the day were the relays and Isabella Hick and Ellie Wright joined Kelly and Jordan to compete in both relays. In the 4x 100 Isabella gave Ilford a great start, before handing over Ellie who kept Ilford in second place, but the last two changeovers were not as sharp and the team came 3rd.
The last event was the 4x 400 with the same quartet lining up, Jordan ran a powerful first leg to give Ilford a 10 metre lead, before handing over to Ellie, who went off slowly and by the back straight had been caught by the Woodford runner. However with 200m to go Ellie shifted up the gears and moved away to establish a 30 metre lead. Although running on her own Isabella stretched the lead even further to almost 70 metres. Kelly could have taken it easy on the last leg, but she pushed it all the way running the fastest leg of the team and Ilford won in a time of 4.30. 2. Almost 16 seconds clear of second place.

Vets AC 5 Mile Champs. Battersea Park 14th June 2016

On a muggy Tuesday evening in Battersea Park the Veterans AC raced out their 5 mile Championship on a fast flat course, Ilford AC had six entrants in the field and all came away with medals from the event.

Running a fine race and leading the Ilford challenge was Steve Philcox in 4th place in 29 mins 18 secs to win the M50 category gold medal. Rohan Alexander was hampered by a calf injury mid race but still recorded 36 mins 07secs in 15th for the M45 silver award. Julia Galea also put in a good race to take the F60 division gold placing 7th female and 26 overall. Next over the line was the club’s endurance coach Rob Sargent in 44m 45s for the M60 grouping silver, while Nicola Chester took gold in the F35 class in 46m 55s in 31st overall with Doris Gaga one place behind in 47m 57s for the F50 silver medal.

Dame Kelly Holmes 5k + 10k. Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Last Sunday the Olympic Park played host to the ‘Dame Kelly Holmes 5k + 10k races’
Rain threatened all morning, and by the time the 10k started this had turned into a downpour.
Despite this over 1,000 runners, including 3 from Ilford AC, enjoyed a run through the park on a course that was mainly flat.
310 finishers completed the 5k race with Ilford’s Zuzana Sinalova coming in 9th place and also second female with a time of 21:09

The 10k race had 824 finishers and of these the very first home was Ilfords own Amin Kokai with a time of 33:07, followed just 15 minutes and 179 places later by Billy Green in 180th place and a pb time of 48:00.