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Thomas Takes Gold at British Champs

Thursday 29th August 2019

A fabulous GB Championships for Phoenix athletes in Birmingham on August 24th & 25th, saw Spencer Thomas’s fantastic hair’s breadth victory in the 800m Final a wonderful conclusion.

There were no less than 3 Phoenix representatives in the Men’s 1500m, with Charlie Da’Vall Grice and Archie Davis both making it through to the Final, whilst George Mills unluckily missed out after finishing 5th in his heat. 

The Final was a slow, tactical race, which did Charlie no favours, and with a number of athletes having the World Championship qualifying time a breakaway quartet ended up competing for 3 selection places. Unfortunately, Charlie was edged into 4th place in a time of 3:48, and it will be a tough choice for the British selectors between our 3:30.62 star who has shown his World Class pedigree throughout the season and Jake Wightman who has consistently proven himself to be a medal-winning operator on the big stage.

Archie Davis followed Charlie home in 7th place which caps off another great season, and a first major outdoor final. 

Beth Kidger ran an excellent 4:18, to make it through the 1500m heats, and produced a gutsy performance in the Final, which once again was a relatively slow tactical race before exploding into life in the final 400m. In a tightly bunched finish, Beth claimed 10th place and will be looking to build on another excellent summer where she has lowered her PB down to 4:14, closing in on the club record.

Toby Harries ran a 46.36 PB in the 400m Heats to finish 2nd behind home favourite and eventual winner Matthew Hudson-Smith and make it through to the Final, where he came up with another great run to finish 5th in 46.51.

Finley Bigg and Spencer Thomas were our two 800m reps, with Finn missing out on the Final, finishing 6th in his heat. Spencer just lost out to, training partner, Elliot Giles in his heat but his 2nd place was good enough to make it through to the Final as one of the fastest losers, and he went on to produce a stunning performance  in the final, with a gutsy front-running display over the final lap which saw him finish ahead of higher-ranked rivals and hang on to claim the title in the closest of photo finishes, thrusting out his arm to hold off Guy Learmonth on the line, with both athletes given the same time of 1:46.71.

Incredible performance, though Spencer still has some work to do to try and duck under the qualifying time before he can book his ticket to Doha! The first opportunity to do so will be a meet on Friday organised by Tonbridge. Very best of luck!

Thanks to Paul Whelpton for the report