Bella makes it four!

In an astonishing display of world class breadth across the clubs young athletes, Arabella Wilson (coach Andy Fisher) yesterday became the 4th of our U18's to achieve a Commonwealth youth games qualifying standard. Each of the 4 athletes have different coaches and take part in different event groups and Bella joins Mia Judd, Alex Beck & Annie Mann on England Athletics list of those having met the standard.Running as a guest in the National Athletics League championship match in Basingstoke, Bella won the 400m hurdles A string race in a time of 60.56 seconds comfortably beating the England Athletics standard of 61 secs. The time is good enough for a whopping 1006 world ranking points and places Bella at 15th on the current world U18 list, 11th in Europe and 4th in the Commonwealth in the U18 age group.Sam Clifton (coach Jermey Clifton) competing as a higher claim athlete for ther first time, threw his 2nd furthest distance ever with the hammer to come 4th in the A string for Sale Harriers in their home premiership NAL match in a celebratory Manchester still buzzing after Saturday's Champions League victory. Sam threw 53.53m and was lucky to have competed before a thunderstorm of biblical proportions forced the match to be abandoned.Jasmine Gordon (coach Martin McBriar) was also competing as a higher claim athlete for the first time and also finished 4th for City of Portsmouth AC in the A string womens hammer, 5th in the A string javelin and 3rd in the B string shot putt in their Championship match in Bedford.