Press Report November 18th 2019  

Samuels Wins the London Youth Games

A number of Ilford Athletic club athletes represented their London Boroughs on Saturday at a very wet Parliament Hill

First up was newly joined u11 athlete Ryder Islam. Ryder started well in the 1.5 k race and used his strength to work through the field to come a very encouraging 57th .

In the u13s Joseph Grange ran an outstanding race.Training with the main group at Ilford has helped build Joseph’s speed and endurance and this was shown in his performance. He worked through the field and had so much left at the end of the race to come a superb 10th position.

In the same race Aaron Hick , struggled at the start of the race but battled along to come 115th.

In the u15s Ryan Holeyman ,coming back from a  slight injury, performed to a high standard as usual. He ran very well against a quality field to come 43rd

In the u17s race Ilford had 3 quality athletes compete for 3 separate boroughs.Aaron samuels,Jak Wright and Bradley Deacon all got good starts and were all in the top 15 for the first half mile.There was a breakaway of about 3 or 4 athletes, which included Aaron – Jak and Bradley were in the second pack.
Aaron seemed to be going very well, sitting on the shoulder of the leader, Oliver Bright.

Being roared on by his Ilford athlete colleagues, Aaron made the decisive kick about 600 metres to go. The last part of the course is completely down hill and Aaron seemed to be flying down the hill and took nearly 10 seconds out of Bright in the last 600. Aaron ran the 4.5 k in 16:47 and became London Youth Games champion for 2019.
This is a very prestigious title and proves that Aaron is running the best he has ever ran at the moment

There was not much between Jak and Bradly over the last 2 miles of the race and both stayed in the pack. Both ran extremely well to finish 21st and 25th.
Once again this was a high quality race and both Jak and Brad showed how much they have come on over the last few years

 

Mungo Prior ran in the Senior Mens London race for the first time. Mungo , still only 17 came a very competitive 55th