A record-breaking day at BAC’s Sandy Open Meeting
Over 200 athletes from nearly 60 clubs across England entered BAC’s 2024 Sandy Open Graded Track & Field Meeting − which also incorporated our Annual Club Championships − on a thankfully dry sunny day at our Sandy track on Saturday September 28.
Highlights included three notable new records**:
· Logan Cowling (Kingston upon Hull), coached by Lewis Capes, son of legendary British shot-putter Geoff Capes − UK national U-13B discus.
· Michael Hausler (Cambridge & Coleridge) − British Masters V-65M shot put.
· Isabella Turner (Dacorum) – U-17W, Sandy Stadium pole vault.
With many athletes multi-eventing, the total number of entries for the meeting was around 360, more than 100 up on the comparable 2023 event. Competitors, who included at least two athletes (Logan Cowling and Isabella Turner) who head the official UK athletics rankings in their respective events, ranged in age from U-11 to V-70.
The always popular field events all attracted either the maximum number of entries accepted or very close to it, requiring five of them to be split into two pools. Encouragingly, several of the track events also generated similar levels of interest, resulting in multiple graded races – including the 100m (8 races), 200m (7), 800m (4) and 400m (3).
Putting on such a major event required a huge amount of work and organisation by BAC. Key figures in that included David Brown, meeting director and track referee; Darren Janssen, administration; Andrew Cant, field referee; and Carol Brunning, chief timekeeper.
“As with all such events, it was a big task to plan everything, prepare a timetable, process all the entries and grade competitors into suitable pools and races ahead of the meeting and then manage everything on the day. It took a team to do all that,” commented David.
“For events of this size, we also rely on some additional outside help and we had 21 invited officials this year. That was probably the biggest number we’ve had for one of our events but without them we would not have been able to put this on – so huge thanks to all concerned.”
**Full details of the new records, together with notable performances by BAC athletes at the meeting, including any new club records, PBs, event wins, etc, will be covered in a report to be posted following publication of the official results on the Power of 10 website – hopefully in the next 7-10 days. That report will be accompanied by many more photos of BAC athletes in action on the day.