BASINGSTOKE and Mid Hants athletes Owen Richardson and Mair Edwards represented Great Britain at the prestigious European Under-20 Championships in Grosseto, Italy.

Richardson was the only British runner in the under-20 men’s 400m, starting with an outstanding run in his heat to be one of the fastest qualifiers for the semi-finals, taking half a second off his previous personal best.

The semi-final was a tight race, and again he managed a superb time that secured his place in the final.

The final was a very exciting race with an extremely close finish and Richardson’s fifth placing, did not do justice to the exceptional performance as he bettered his PB again as he finished in a time of 46.49sec.

This now puts him a whole second ahead of anyone else in the UK under-20 rankings, and making him number eight overall.

Team mate Edwards, formed part of the 4 x 400m women’s relay team, running the second leg in the heat, and first leg in the final helping the team to a bronze medal in another exciting race.

Edwards is usually a 200m runner where she is ranked as number three in the UK, so was delighted to be part of the team, as one of the youngest participants at her first major international competition.

BASINGSTOKE and Mid Hants AC have won the Wessex Young Athletes League for the seventh year running and the girls won outright all of their age categories too.

As well as great performances and depth across the teams, with almost all the relay teams winning at each meeting, there were some excellent individual performances including the outstanding league record broken by Ayomide Cole with a time of 12.7 for the 100m at the meeting in Portsmouth in June.

Cole won every single event she entered over the season which was the hurdles, long jump as well as the 100 and 200 metre sprints.

In the under-15 age group Isabel Pinder also won all of her events across the four meetings, competing in high jump, 300m and 200m.

The under-17 women’s team was also very strong with impressive performances especially on the track.

Pictured above are the under-17 women’s 4x100 relay team at Woking. Left to right: Robyn Hill, Catherine Edwards, Sarah Fafiade, Tracy Kumah.