The Chronicle January 2020

45 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

The girls’ athletics team was small yet mighty. Despite being few in number the 1st team girls, led by captain Livi Tomacelli, finished in second place overall on all three outings to Marlborough and recorded an impressive 15 first places during their fixtures. Fiona Bristow, Jenny Hannah and Aniella Weinberger dominated the sprint, middle distance and long jump events and the sight of the distinctive gold-backed vest ahead of the rest of the field was a motivating factor for the rest of the team. These girls also broke an array of school records throughout the season: Fiona now holds both the 100m (12.6s) and Long Jump (5.05m) records, Livi the 200m record (28.2s) and Aniella the 800m record (2.24m). Congratulations to Jenny who became County Champion in the 3,000m, an impressive effort. The inter girls also did very well with three first and three second places, and five third places with Lily Helling and Grace Flynn performing exceptionally well to win field events. Despite our junior athletes not training regularly due to their other sporting commitments, Freddie Walton ran an outstanding 80m hurdles race to become County Champion. As a result of this performance he competed for Oxfordshire in the 80m hurdles and also the 4x100m relay at the ESAA National Schools’ Finals at Alexander Stadium in Birmingham, an incredible two day experience for Freddie. The relay team, for which he ran first leg, qualified from their heat for the final and finished in sixth place. Along with Freddie, 12 other athletes competed in the County Championships. Our emerging junior athletes performed admirably and notable performances came from Hermione Brewster, Lila Howard, William Robertson-Acolet, George Knee, Oliver Sedgwick, Hamza Ali, Zac Neville, Dylan Jones and Egor Varivoda. It is fantastic to celebrate so many individual successes, however the highlights of the season once again came in the Achilles Relays and the Radley Relays. With so many teams competing there is always a great atmosphere which makes it all the more exciting. The senior sprint relay squad of Max Liddy, Louis Williams, Felix Burton, Matt Walton and Dan Hoggar made both finals of the Achilles Relays, finishing fifth in the 4x100m. They then ran even better in the 4x200m to win the overall bronze medal, edging out Harrow to finish third behind Millfield and Eton. The 4x800m

Fiona Bristow in the Long Jump at Marlborough

team narrowly missed out on a medal after a superb final leg from Fergus Flory helped them finish in fourth place. At the Radley Relays the senior medley team of Dan Hoggar, Matt Walton, Felix Burton and Fergus Flory achieved silver medals after finishing a close second behind Eton, in the process breaking the school record - fitting and deserved achievements for such a talented group of athletes.

Last year’s Upper Sixth will be missed in the summer; right from the start of their Teddies careers they were dedicated to athletics, undertaking many gruelling training sessions and always striving for new personal bests and team success. They led by example and through their approach to training sessions demonstrated the importance of pushing yourself to your limits in order to become the best version of yourself.

Alpine Teddies Cooper Lodge pupil Flavio Vitale who divides his schooling between St Edward’s and Apex 2100, an international ski race academy in Tignes, France, overseen by Director of Sport Sir Clive Woodward. Flavio is joined in Tignes by Corfe pupil Lilou Bazile, and both will return to Teddies at the end of the ski season in April; St Edward’s is one of only two UK partner schools to the elite training facility. This picture was taken by Will Webb OSE who is currently working as an intern at Apex