Baker grabs a gold medal for team GB

Two of the Harrier’s senior men’s squad competed at Sunday’s European XC Championships held in Toro, Spain. Andrew Baker from our partner Club, Yeovil Olympiads, competed for Britain in the u’23s race and finished an excellent 12^th to help the GB Team to the u’23 Gold medals, whilst Bruton’s Frank Tickner went in the main event and finished in 37^th place, with the team finishing 4^th overall. The men’s race and women’s races were shown in full on BBC TV. In the women’s race Hayley Yelling, formerly of Yeovil, also ran well securing a top ten finish.

Frank was competing for the third time at these Championships and his 37^th place follows up previous 37^th and 33^rd positions. This year his time was 33.01 for the 10k course with winner Sergey Lebid of the Ukraine recording 31.47 for another emphatic victory. This year in mild conditions and with the sun shining down Frank started well and was just at the back of the leading group during the first half of the race which was run at a steady pace. Following an injection of pace by the leaders which broke up this group Frank tried to maintain contact and a steady rhythm but lost ground before a late rally to ensure he finished 4^th of the 6 British athletes to compete.

Meanwhile in the u’23 race, Andrew Baker, currently spending a year away from Somerset studying in the USA, finished an excellent 12^th, 2^nd from Team GB, to help the team home for Gold. Andrew started steady and worked his way through the field to finish in a time of 24.58 behind the winning time of 24.31 by the Turkish athlete Koyuncu. Andrew was delighted to be a Gold medallist and looks forward to many more excellent outings on the country this winter.

There will be a large number of Harriers out at this coming weekend’s County XC Championships at Edgarley which is combined with the SW League and the Wessex League. Though it is unlikely that any of the Harrier’s internationals will be present we wish all that take part “Good luck”.