Athletics: Team Edinburgh settle for fifth place in National Junior final at Derby

Team EDINBURGH, who Scotland’s sole athletics 
representatives, could not quite repeat the heroics of the previous weekend’s National Youth League triumph when they finished fifth overall in a high quality National Junior league final at Derby yesterday.

None faced more daunting opposition than double Scottish senior sprint champion Tom Holligan, who came up against Olympic semi-finalist Adam Gemili (Blackheath & Bromley). Gemili won the 100 metres in 10.21 seconds with Holligan, a fellow World Junior team member, setting a season’s best of 10.80sec in third place.

The 18-year-old Londoner was even more impressive in winning the 200m in 20.32sec, just 0.03 outside Christian Malcolm’s long-standing UK junior record, with Holligan back in fifth place in 21.88sec.

Edinburgh’s Emily Dudgeon, a World Junior 800m finalist, won the 1500m in 4:36.17 while Jake Wightman won the men’s 1500m in 3:55.02 and there were wins for Kirsten 
Peters (2:13.37) in the 800m, with Hannah Cameron taking the B race, and Kimberley Reed in the hammer (55.40m), with Kelly Bobbley winning the B event. Beth Finlayson had personal best times in finishing third in both sprints, the 100m in 12.13, which matches the time the Capital’s 
partially-sighted T12 sprinter Libby Clegg achieved in striking silver in the Paralympics, and the 200m in 24.30, which is the fastest legal time by a Scot this season.

Ben Robbins was also third in a personal best of 49.11 in the 400m.

Final positions: 1 Shaftesbury Barnet 487; 2 Birchfield 444; 3 Blackheath & Bromley 435; 4 Windsor, Slough & Eton 423.5; 5 Team Edinburgh 416; 6 Sale 407; 7 West Wales 304; 8 Gateshead 277.5.

Meanwhile, Lynsey Sharp (EAC) was seventh in the 800m in 2:01.49 in the last Diamond League meet of the season in Brussels. She then opted to call time on her season and did not go on to Rieti, Italy yesterday.