Tickner Hits the Top

Frank Tickner the twenty two year old Wells City Harrier put himself at the top of Britain’s Cross Country rankings last Saturday when he convincingly won the Trial to select the Great Britain team for the European Championships which are being held in Milan, Italy in two weeks time

He ran comfortably with the leading pack of runners for three of the four laps of Liverpool’s Sefton Park until he decided to hit the front and pull away from his adversaries on the last lap. He covered the 10km of muddy parkland in a fast 31min 18sec. Frank’s target in Italy is to significantly improve on his 37^th place in last years championships and hopefully lead the Great Britain team to team medals and beat last years champions France in the process.

A boost for the Harriers team morale was the outstanding performance of Andrew Baker, the Loughborough based student, who has been showing consistent improvement over the last few seasons. He finished an excellent 20^th and as a result was selected for the Under 23 Great Britain team to compete at the same championships. Pete Grist, a student at Cardiff University, also ran but finished a disappointed 100^th in 36min23sec.

It is interesting to note that all three of the above were part of the Harriers youth team which won Southern Counties silver medals six years ago at Parliament Hill. Hoping to carry on the Harriers tradition of producing top class cross country runners, fast improving Alex Wiltshire competed in the Under15 boys event and finished an excellent 6^th just 9 seconds behind the winner Scottish Schools Champion Callum Hawkins and 5 sec behind English Schools Champion Nathan Young.