Bedford & County’s Junior athletes took part in the EYAL Plate Final on Sunday 7th September at Thurrock. We went into the match 3rd on paper. After an amazing set of performances we finished 2nd overall. Our U13 & U15 girls won their age groups. U17W were 6th, U13B 3rd, U15B 2nd and U17M 5th.
Match results:
1st Thurrock 623
2nd Bedford 565
3rd Herts Phoenix 544
4th Ipswich 528
5th Cambridge 503
6th Cobra 488
Bedford Masters Men and Women made the journey to Thurrock on Saturday to contest the Eastern Masters League Final. The Women’s team having qualified for the first time in 20 years, a terrific result for a very small team.
The match started with the pole vault for both men and women and resulted in the Bedford competitors Bob Kingman, Simon Eastwood, Richard Phelan and Gemma Eastwood all winning their events, setting the team up for the rest of the day.
From that great start the Men’s Team was never headed with sterling support from all athletes. Everyone competed in multiple events, some covering events that they had not tried for many years, but there were still a few unfilled places due to holidays, work and injuries.
The Women’s team competed well but shortage of numbers meant they were always going to struggle.
Special mention must be made to Bob Kingman who was awarded the Men’s Field Best Performance Trophy for his 3.8m pole vault.
Congratulations to Bob Kingman on increasing his M50 pole vault record to 4.01m at the SAL in Sandy on 31 August 2025.
Congratulations to Helen Buller who set a new W45 5000m club record at the SAL in Sandy on 31st August with a time of 19 minutes 26.5 seconds.
Many congratulations to Mia Flynn who jumped to number 3 on the UK U15 Hammer rankings with a massive throw of 49.95m at the Biggleswade Open Meeting on Saturday 23 August, improving her own club record by over two and a half metres.
Last Sunday 6 of the club's Masters Athletes were competing in York in the England Masters Inter Area Championships.
Our middle distance runners were out in force at the BMC at Trafford on Saturday.
In the 1500’s, Sam Knee-Robinson ran a PB of 3:51.04, whilst Sam Winters ran his second fastest time ever, recording 3:46.89. Ed Blythman was very unfortunate to be badly baulked with 150 to go, but still held on for a creditable time of 3:49.08.
In the 800, Alfie Yabsley, ran 1:55.43, after also running 1:55.56 in midweek at Loughborough.
In the 5000’s, Ben Alcock was very close to breaking 14 minutes again, with 14:00.43, and Ben Davies ran a very solid 14:32.36 in his first track 5000 for many years.
Joe Strange recorded 2:00.46 in finishing second in his race at Loughborough in midweek, but, perhaps more notably, when Joe ran 1:59.09 at Nuneaton in July, this constituted his 12th consecutive year of recording a sub 2 minute 800 – quite an achievement.
