Chris Clarke of Great Britain (© Getty Images)
The Great Britain & Northern Ireland team for the IAAF World Youth Championships was announced last week with the strongest medal hopes resting with sprinters Chris Clarke and Asha Philip.
Clarke, 17, jumped to the top of the world youth 400m rankings when finishing second at the England Athletics Under-20 championships with a big PB of 46.70 – the first time he has dipped under 47 seconds.
He has been threatening to run such times ever since his first significant breakthrough in 2005 when he chopped his times from 11.31, 22.35 and 51.1 down to 10.8, 21.61 and 47.55. Clarke’s most impressive performance that year was when, aged 15, he won the national under-17 200m and 400m titles – within 25 minutes of each other!
Off the back of even more strong performances in 2006, the diminutive Clarke was selected for the 4x400m at the IAAF World Junior Championships where he was the youngest male member of the British team. Running the first leg, Clarke – whose Aunt is the former European Indoor 60m bronze medallist Wendy Hoyte – led the team to bronze in Beijing.
But one year later and no longer is he ‘just’ a relay runner. Clarke – whose running style has often been likened to that of world record-holder Michael Johnson’s – is now an individual medal favourite for Ostrava next month.
Equally as precocious is 16-year-old Asha Philip. The 100m sprinter slashed her best down to 11.37 at the national junior championships – although, given her spate of performances over the past twelve months, her run was hardly a surprise.
Philip, then aged 15, finished fourth in last year’s IAAF World Junior 100m final. Earlier in the rounds she had equalled the UK youth 100m record of 11.45, which had been held by Olympic finalist Sonia Lannaman since 1972.
Philip’s recent 100m PB means she is now the sole owner of the record. And it is her second one of the year, having set a national youth record of 7.35 over 60m back in February.
But the most impressive thing about Philip is that she has achieved all of this while training part-time in athletics. The rest of her time is spent training for the double-mini trampoline – a gymnastics event in which she is the world age 15-16 champion. She admits, though, that her long-term future is in athletics.
Other potential medallists in the British team include Philip’s younger 100m team-mate Ashlee Nelson, who ran 11.56 this year, improving on the UK age-14 record of 11.58 she set two years ago. Also 800m runner Alison Leonard, the much-improved sprinter Jordan Huggins and steeplechaser Sarah Hopkinson all look set for a strong performance in Ostrava.
Jon Mulkeen for the IAAF
