BUCS is a unique opportunity to pit yourself against the very best of the UK’s athletes and witness incredibly high-class performances. Unsurprisingly, many of these high-class performances came from Cambridge’s own contingent.

This story begins two weeks in advance of this past weekend. A cool and blustery afternoon in Loughborough was the scene for the BUCS 10000m. While these conditions may not have been ideal for many events, they clearly seemed to suit Stella Wernicke, who ran a track PB of 37:21 to claim 3 sought-after BUCS points for the Cambridge women’s team.

Fast forward to the early May bank holiday and the wind was making another unwelcome appearance, this time in Manchester. First up this weekend on the field was Reese Robinson, comfortably qualifying for the women’s triple jump final with 12.15m despite a -2.8 wind reading. She improved further on this season’s best with a new wind-legal PB in the final of 12.46m for 6th place, meaning more BUCS points for the team! Also in the horizontal jumps went Jane Mills in the long jump, soaring to 5.06m. It’s looking like it will be a prosperous season for Jane following her PB at CUAC Sports the previous week. Moving from the sand to the high jump bed, Annie Durand-Marandi cleared 1.60 to qualify for the final, with Sunshine Kellah-Nash narrowly missing out with her 1.50, equalling her PB from BUCS Indoors. On the men’s side, Morgan Treasure went in the long jump qualification on Sunday afternoon, putting down a mark of 6.89 into a -2 headwind to reach the final, in which he jumped a similar distance to grab 10th.

In the throws, both Maike Deckert and Kaila Borgards had remarkably productive weekends. Maike started the weekend with 4th place in the javelin B final, throwing 28.83, which would have been a PB had she not thrown the spear in excess of 30m at CUAC Sports – what a milestone! Maike also broke the 30m barrier for the first time in the discus B final on the Sunday morning, after coming agonisingly close the previous weekend, while Kaila replicated her 31-metre throw from the week before. Remaining stunningly consistent across disciplines, Maike then threw 29.43 in the hammer, just a few centimetres shy of her mark from FEAR in February, while Kaila was just behind her with a throw of 25.97. Evidencing the depth of our throws squad, Kaila also threw 9.40 in the shot, while Maike finally finished her weekend with a throw of 9.64 in the same event, again not far away from her throw in much better conditions at CUAC Sports. Oxford will be worried one of the Cambridge women will be breaking the 30m barrier in the shot come Varsity, given their apparent affinity for this distance.

The first event of the weekend on the track was the 1500. For the women, we had both Beth Rogers and Milly Dickinson qualifying for the semi-finals, with Milly running a PB of 4:42.91 to win her heat, which represented a hugely encouraging return to form following recent injury problems. For the men, both George Ogden and Adam Dray also achieved the big Q into the semi-finals. When the semis rolled around on Sunday, Milly didn’t just reinforce but totally obliterated her shiny new PB with a new mark of 4:30.82 to get through to the following day’s final. While Adam was not able to pull off such a whopping PB, he was only a couple hundredths of a second off his best-ever performance with his semi-final run, also making it through to the final. Adam and Milly finished their weekends with 9th and 11th respectively overall, which are brilliant achievements.

The next event on the track following the 1500m heats was the 100m. This really was an event for building experience this weekend, as headwinds hovering around -2.5 precluded any especially rapid times, but despite this James Russell was able to run rather close to his time in somewhat calmer whether the preceding weekend with a time of 12.02. Pelumi Babalola was done especially dirty with the gusts, with the gauge reading -3.7 for his 11.42s run; he would have been solidly in with a chance of qualifying for the semis had the wind been slightly more in his favour. In the 200, James R again dealt with the wind very well, running just a hundredth of a second off his PB. Meanwhile, James McCulloch – replacing Pelumi, who had probably had enough of the weather – would like everyone to know his wind reading was -3.4 and for no further questions to be asked.

The headwind perhaps posed less of a problem in the 400m hurdles heats, as in the final straight one can’t feel anything anyway. James McCulloch had what coach Bob deemed a “breakthrough” in his heat, breaking the 60 second barrier with a two second PB of 59.21. Oli Hector made the last-minute decision to sub-in and ran in the third heat despite doing zero training for this event all year, running 59.32 in what may be his last ever 400H. In the 800m, Ella Colbourn ran solidly in the heats to gain the big Q into the semis, while Tim Bongaerts very narrowly missed out on a spot, running a PB time of 1:57.26, marginally improving on his time in Watford on 16th April. Cameron Deverill was also not far off with his 1:58.28, a season’s best. Following the 8s was everyone’s favourite event, the 400m. Olivia Sparks went in the heats for the women, achieving auto-qualification into the semis. Sol Inglis also qualified for the semis, running a new personal best of 50.20 and beating one of Oxford’s Blues hopefuls in the process. There was a rematch in the semis, and despite Oxford’s confidence Sol reigned supreme again and ran an exceptional 49.69.

Moving on to a very different style of race, Niamh Thompson displayed clear skill over the steeplechase barriers as she qualified second-fastest into the 2000SC final. This final was an excellent show of determination as she was able to stick with the leading group for the greater part of the race, finishing in an impressive 4th and breaking seven minutes for the second time in her career. Thomas Dugré was Cambridge’s offering in the men’s equivalent, providing some excitement as his momentary lapse in numeracy meant he was almost denied one of the 6 auto-qualification spots up for grabs in his heat. Nevertheless, he mirrored Niamh’s success in the final with a 4th place finish of his own. Sticking with the longer distances, Terry Fawden achieved a four-second track PB of 14:27.39 to finish 15th in the 5000m A final, with Max Walk finishing not far behind in 23rd. Niamh Bridson Hubbard and Bea Wood represented Cambridge in the women’s A final, achieving 7th and 4th place respectively; Bea ran a track PB of over a minute with her performance of 16:10.96!

The very final event of the weekend was the men’s 4x400 final. On the Sunday evening, the team (in order) of James McCulloch, Jack Lipman, Zac Baylis, and Sol Inglis, ran a 3:24 (equivalent to last year’s winning Varsity time) to qualify 5th fastest into the final. The following evening, despite most of the other teams subbing in runners with much fresher legs, the team improved their performance by a further 2 seconds to run 3:22.25 and claim 6th place in a highly competitive race. This demonstrates the depth of Cambridge’s 400 squad this year; what will also be the final event at Varsity proves to be as spectacular as ever.

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