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Home News Weekend Round Up: Athletes Hit Birmingham Standards

Weekend Round Up: Athletes Hit Birmingham Standards

August 16, 2021

With plenty of Scots in sporting action across the globe over the weekend here’s our round up of just some of the highlights:

Athletics

The Scottish Athletics Senior National Championships at Grangemouth saw Kirsty Law claim her 13th Scottish title in the discus, her tenth in a row, with a winning throw of 56.26m, having recently extended her personal best to 59.95 – well in excess of the qualifying standard for Birmingham 2022. In the men’s discus Nick Percy was a little disappointed by his best of 59.47m, having thrown over 60m multiple times this season, but was happy to walk away with the Scottish title.

David Smith was in excellent form in the high jump, clearing the 2.23m Birmingham 2022 qualifying standard at the first time of asking, before going on to have three close attempts at a new PB height of 2.27m. Hammer thrower Chris Bennett, a finalist at Gold Coast 2018, was also over the Birmingham standard as he won with a throw of 70.88m.

Bera Ajala leapt out to 15.89m in the triple jump to win his first senior national title and break the Scottish Junior record that had stood to Craig Duncan since 1983, while Alessandro Schenini added 17cm to his personal best to take the long jump title with 7.76m, just 10cm shy of a Commonwealth Games qualifying mark.

Schenini was one of a number of young athletes stepping up to take senior titles following appearances for Team Scotland at the Commonwealth Youth Games in 2015 and 2017. Ben Greenwood and Olivia Vareille took the men’s and women’s 800m crowns, while Carys McAulay, a medallist in the 800m at Samoa 2015, took gold over 400m.

Gavin Drysdale was very close to his own World record mark as he clocked 16.27 in the RR2 100m and returned the following day to add gold in the Mixed RR 400m with a championship best of 74.06.

Cycling

Phoebe Gale stormed to victory in the third round of UCI Downhill Mountain Bike World Cup in Maribor, Slovenia, taking gold in the Junior Women’s event ahead of Izabela Yankova of Bulgaria and Aina Gonzalez of Spain. Fellow Scot Bethany McCully finished in 12th place. Gale’s win came on the back of gold at both the Les Gets World Cup and UK National Championships in July.

Mikayla Parton was 14th in the Elite Women’s race, with William Brodie 19th in the Junior Men and Reece Wilson finishing 21st in the Elite Men.

Fresh from representing Team GB at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Anna Shackley was back on the road to take 13th place at the Ladies Tour of Norway, just 1 min 40 behind winner Annemiek van Vlueten.

Hockey

Scotland’s men opened their Men’s EuroHockey Championships II campaign with a 4-4 draw with Ukraine as the event got underway in Gniezno, Poland.

Scotland took the lead through Andrew McConnell as he struck home from a penalty corner, and the side looked well in control as two more goals in quick succession from Alan Forsyth and Rob Harwood made it 3-0.

Ukraine pulled one back early in the second half and, despite Scotland almost adding to their tally in a penalty corner goal-mouth scramble, it was Ukraine who struck next to make it 3-2. In the final quarter, Cammy Golden restored a two-goal cushion for the Scots and nearly struck again moments later, but his diving flick went just wide of the mark. A dramatic finish saw two Ukrainian goals in 30 seconds to level the match for a final score of 4-4.

Scotland’s next match is against Austria tonight (Monday 16 Aug) at 18:00 UK time. All matches are being streamed on eurohockeytv.org

Triathlon

Team Scotland Glasgow 2014 and Gold Coast 2018 athlete Grant Sheldon was in action at the Montreal leg of the World Triathlon Championship Series, taking place in a super-sprint format for the first time. Following a less than ideal preparation after his handlebars snapped in warm-up, he just missed out on a place in the final after finishing 11th in the qualifying round, with the top ten progressing. While the result was not what he was looking for he was upbeat with the positives he could take as he prepares to compete in Edmonton this week.

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