The sunny weekend of September the 9th and 10th saw the Surrey combined events championships take place at Crawley’s excellent new K2 stadium.
Walton had entrants in 3 events; under 13 boys pentathlon, under 13 girls pentathlon and the Senior men’s decathlon.
The opening day saw Josh Corrigan competing in his first pentathlon and Jon Ladley begin the first half of his decathlon.
Josh had an excellent day, completing Long Jump, Shot Put, High Jump, 800m finishing 5th overall in Surrey with 1186 points. Jon then went on to have his best ever first day. It started with 12.28 100m, followed by his second furthest ever jump in the long jump with 5.83m, then after a controversial mis-measured first attempt, a 7.92m shot put had Jon in 5th place. Jon then produced a 7 cm personal best in the high jump with 1.66m, then finished the day with a gruelling 400m in a fairly slow time of 54.87 seconds, this saw Jon finish the day with 2625 points in fourth, 6 points behind the third place held by Croydon’s D/Manny Nsoduh-Hall.
The second day had Carla Letheby competing in for the first time in the girls pentathlon, with Jon Ladley completing the final day of his decathlon. Carla finished with 1573 points in 8th position having participated in a hard day consisting of hurdles, long jump, shot put, high jump and 800m. Jon started the day with the tricky 110m hurdles (the event all decathletes fear), fortunately he came out of it unscathed with a PB of 20.90 seconds. Jon then moved onto the discus to produce a solid throw of 25.09m (a decathlon best), before starting the arduous pole vault competition. In the simmering heat of the afternoon sun, Jon produced another personal best performance with a first time clearance of 3.05m. With 2 events to go Jon was still in fourth place, and needed a good javelin to avoid falling further behind in the race for bronze. Sadly this wasn’t to be, and Jon only threw a disappointing 29.75m, 10m less than the third placed competitor. This meant that going into the 1500m Jon needed to pick up 181 points to get the bronze. After a somewhat comical start where 22 athletes lined up in two rows, Jon was up with the leaders early on. However it became evident he had gone off too fast and paid for the early pace, but a strong finish saw him with a time of 4 minutes 50 seconds. Crossing the line he turned round to see the current bronze medallist around 300m behind, and then finishing over a minute behind.
A nervous wait to the results with the medal ceremony ensued. It was only when 4th place was announced that Jon knew he had got the bronze. However when 3rd place was announced it transpired that Jon had actually run fast enough to overtake the 2nd placed athlete, Epsom’s Ian Frankish, and picked up the silver medal by 25 points to finish on a personal best score of 4558, behind Woking’s Roy Chambers.
See here for photos