Highest placing ever for B&H at the National Road Relays

The Brighton & Hove senior team set what is believed to be the the highest placing ever by a Sussex team in the National 6-stage road relay championships at Sutton, Birmingham on Saturday. Despite the absence of two of their top performers they finished a brilliant 12th in 1:50:15, less than three minutes behind title winners Tonbridge and had they been at full strength they would have been challenging for medals. Team manager Howard Bristow started proceedings, leading them out on the first leg and did well to bring them back in 15th position in a time of 17:55 on what is usually the most competitive leg of the day. The young and ever improving Stephen Ferroni then ran an excellent second leg taking them into 6th position with the team’s fastest leg of the day and 13th fastest overall, 17:31. Max Dumbrell ran a steady leg to keep the team in contention in 12th in 18:38 and handed over to Ian Crowe-Wright who had a great run, posting their second fastest leg in 17:42, the fastest on the fourth leg, and taking the team to 4th, their highest position of the day. James Turner, 18:53, and Graham Godden, 19:36, completed with day, slipping back to 9th and 12th respectively. This was however a great team effort and they repeated their efforts of a couple of weeks back as the sixth South of England team to finish.