Review of a Big Week

From Battersea to Gradski, OpenTrack has oiled the wheels of some great athletics

As the track and field season hots up, we’ll start at South London’s Battersea Park where large fields fought over the spoils over 7 races. To be sure, 5,000m on the track is something that people fully savour now, and its future looks assured as a really popular event for all to try and not just reserved for the supremely fit.

One of OT’s ‘party tricks’ is to accumulate all of the sub-elite races into one list, which gives the athletes far more of a ‘tell’ as to how they’ve got along. In the sub-elite races no fewer than 24 runners broke 15 and all but one of 85 starters went sub 19. A classic night for the grassroots.

And the action then severely hotted in the Elites. The women’s were won by Belgrave’s Kate Axford [pictured] in a tightly contested race, which was a nice fillip for the host club. Herne Hill’s young star Georgie Grgec was 3 seconds back in 15:52.

The men’s race was won by Zakaraiy Mahamed in a scorching 13:47, with a notable 14 athletes breaking 14:20. It was a night of great action in where the club engine-roomers could brush shoulders with possible future Olympians, and OpenTrack was delighted to take care of the 155 entries and produce all the results of the night in real time.

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Elsewhere, on the weekend of 29/30 April, there was OpenTrack action in Bislett [509 entries]; a steeplechase and middle distance festival in West Suffolk; a busy SLAN meet [South London Athletic Network]; a meet at Queen’s Park for the Scottish regional series; another in Sillamae, Estonia; a huge Open and Young Athlete’s meet in Malta; a thriving meet in Banja Luka BIH; and yet more action hosted by Srpski Athletski Savez [Serbia].

As ever, we love to see athletics in Guernsey thriving and it certainly was with their meet at the Aztec Track and Field series; plus further busy meets in Priboj, Serbia; St. John’s in Malta; and 242 competitors descended on the Apningsstevnet Stadion in Norway.

Finally, we’re really delighted to be now fully enveloped with Athletics Croatia. They held a classy Pole vault competition in February using our system as a dummy run, and have now progressed to a full on meet, with 112 entries supporting competition at the Stadion Gradski. There were 25 events which saw an even spread of men and women enjoying the magic of competitive grassroots athletics.

The season is still in its early stages, and things will only get busier this next few months.