Ben Wells at Yate in the Premier West match on 3/7/21 by Missy Dale.

Swansea edge Premier West clash

National Athletics League, Premiership West, Yate, 3/7/21 by Graham Howell

The dire warnings of heavy rain and thunder storms didn’t materialise until 4pm and, even then, it didn’t last too long. The afternoon’s sport was largely competitive although teams had been affected by athletes unavailable due to having to isolate.

Swansea’s Caryl Granville repeated her match one victory in the 400m hurdles, well clear of the field in a 57.89 performance. In a close battle up the home straight, Yate’s young 800m athlete Greg Hayward just edged to the line first in a PB of 1:57.64.

The sprinters enjoyed a following wind which gusted a little too favourably most of the time being over the 2m/s point for record purposes. Emmanuelle Kone and Madeleine Silcock took both the women’s 100m races for Cardiff while Yate’s Daniel Brooks and Isaac Cory did the same for the men.

Three sub-22s clockings in the men’s 200m events from Swansea’s Daniel Beadsley, Yate’s Ben Wells and Bristol’s Oliver Biddle produced a quality race with Daniel taking the number one spot in 21.27.

A classy hammer throw of 60.59m from Catherine Beatty of Bristol AC and Cyprus was the pick of the hammer competitions while 53.54m in the men’d discus from James Tomlinson of Cardiff was well clear of the others. Patrick Swan of Swansea put the shot out to 17.43m which easily took first place and lifted him to fifth on the 2021 UK rankings.

Bristol’s Joel Townley leapt to 15.27m in the triple and 7.20m in the long jump where he was just edged out of best jump by team-mate Jake Burkey ,who went out to 7.33m. In the women’s long jump Cardiff and Swansea had a tussle in the forms of Rebecca Chapman and Emily Thomas, where only 1cm separated the pair at the end. Chapman was just in first with 6.15m ahead of Thomas with 6.14m.

The day closed for the home club Yate with a satisfying men’s 4x100m relay win in 43.29, setting a club record. Overall, Swansea won by 8.2 points with a total of 359.1 from 350.9 for Bristol & West.

Full results are available here.

Photo Credit: Ben Wells leads the 200m in Yate by Missy Dale.