Congratulations to Stephen Simmons, who won gold in the English Schools Decathlon Championships at Bedford on the weekend of 18th and 19th September.  Stephen also broke the club's under 20 Decathlon record with a score of 6710 points.

Having just started at University, Stephen may have been understandably a little jaded at the start of the competition, and opened his account with an 11.65 second 100m into a headwind.  This ranked him 6th of the 35 starters.  He improved to 2nd place after a near personal best of 6.68 metres in the long jump. He then consolidated 2nd place with a big personal best of 12.23m in the shot and equalled his lifetime best with 1.80m in the High Jump. Despite recording 52.03 seconds (again close to his best ever) he finished 5th fastest in the 400m, dropping back to 3rd place overnight. With a strong second day to come, there was still much to play for.

Stephen opened day two with an excellent 14.60 seconds in the 110M hurdles - only five one-hundredths behind the winner.  This moved him up to take the overall lead with 4329 points. He then launched a superb first throw in the discus – a lifetime best of 44.52m to win the event and extend his lead further.  Another big personal best came in the Pole Vault where he cleared 3.90m, losing some ground to his rivals, but still well in the lead. Stephen  threw a near personal best of 43.15m in the javelin to keep himself 200 points ahead of the chasing pack.  

With just the 1500m, the lead might have appeared unassailable, but this was far from the case. Both his chief rivals - Patrick Morgan and Oliver Adnitt - had recorded times of 4 minutes 27 this year. With an expected time of 5 minutes this was Stephen’s weakest event. With a difference of 204 points between running 4 min 27 and 5 minutes, it was clearly going to be a close run thing. He was going to need to finish within 150 metres of Morgan and 180 metres of Adnitt.

Despite being several metres behind the last man in the field after the first 100m, Stephen kept a cool nerve and stuck to the pre agreed race plan of 5 minute pace. At one point,  Oliver Adnitt was 200m ahead, but slowed when fatigue caught up with him after a fast early pace. Although Adnitt equalled his personal best of 4 minutes 27  seconds in winning the race, Stephen emptied the tank finishing in just over 5 minutes 2 seconds.

With Patrick Morgan finishing third in the 1500m in 4:32, no-one knew whether Stephen would prevail until the final result was announced.  When it was, Stephen had won the decathlon in a new club Under 20 record of 6710 points with Patrick Morgan only 21 points behind for the silver; and Oliver Adnitt a further 27 points back for the bronze medal.  There was a shared lap of honourat the end for all the young decathletes, which illustrated the competition's spirit of camraderie.