Athletics Ewan smashes his PB with superb run in Birmingham

TEENAGER Ewan Sparey smashed his personal best with a startling performance in the British Milers Club Gold Standard meeting at the University of Birmingham on Wednesday night and leave him tantalisingly close to the Bristol & West AC 46-year-old U17s club record.

- Kevin FAHEY

The 15-year-old smashed his personal best by just more than four seconds with a time of 1mins 52.81secs to put him top of the South West Rankings and sixth in the UK.

Club chairman Ben Maliphant confirmed that is certainly the quickest time by an U17 since Bristol & West AC was formed, but in the club's complete history Sparey is now third fastest with the record of 1:52.30 set by Keith Bennett in 1979 in Liverpool while Dave Burden clocked 1:52.70 in 1967.

"I'm really pleased but I wasn't expecting it," said Sparey. "I did 1:56.90 at the first Bristol Track Nights meeting at Whitehall (May 7) and felt after that I could go faster so decided to get a last-minute entry for the BMC meeting.

"Conditions were great and the Birmingham track is quite enclosed. It was also good to be well-paced and running with people faster than me, so I could just get dragged around.

"I went through 400m in 55/56seconds and felt chilled. At 600m I ramped it up a bit and just tried to overtake as many people as possible."

Sparey finished strongly to place sixth of the nine runners in the mixed age group race and, as a first year U17, feels that club record is well within his grasp. "But next the goal is to focus upon running a fast 1500m and hopefully getting under four minutes," added Sparey.

Sparey's performance came just a few days after he helped Team Avon win their second UKA Youth Development League U20/17 Midland Premier South & West match at Cardiff.

Racing the U20s 800m, Sparey cruised to victory in 1:58.47 for what proved to be a little loosener ahead of his exploits on Wednesday evening. For good measure, club-mate Isaac Dick was runner-up in the B 800m.

Sparey wasn't the only B&W winner for the successful Team Avon squad who look on course to again qualify for the UK Finals in Liverpool at the end of the season.