Press Report. 29th January 2018  

South of England XC Championships 
Stanmer Park, Brighton
Saturday 27th January

The South of England Cross-Country Championship was held at Stanmer Park Brighton on a cold, wet day on a muddy course which was very slippery as the mud had a solid base of hard chalk underneath.

Ilford took a small team of young athletes to the South of England Cross country championships at Brighton last Saturday. Then had been some issues with parking at the course, and some teams had even boycotted the event, but there were still some high quality races.

The under 15’s were first up, unfortunately Aaron Samuel who had been having a great winter season had been in bed all week, and only decided to run so that Ilford could complete a team. Aaron gave it a good go, but was clearly suffering and ended up 49th, Jak Wright has been improving all winter, and this was one of his best runs for a very good 74th place.
Farris Patel is not keen on cross country and vows it’s my last one after every race. However parts of the course were quite dry and Farris was able to use his track speed to finish a creditable 106th.
Bradley Deacon is also having a good season and was rewarded for his recent hard training with 130th place.
Ilford have not had an U15 team finish for almost 20 years, and the boys can be proud of their 13th place finish.

Next up was Matthew Hick in the U13’s race, this was one of the biggest fields of the day with over 260 runners in the field, its always difficult to get a good start in these races, and unfortunately Matthew did not make a great. However once he got going he was moving rapidly through the field and eventually finished a very good 85th