SportTayside & Fife Track & Field Championships

The annual SportTayside & Fife Championships took place at the weekend at the George Duncan Athletics Arena in Perth. This was the first time the event has moved from its traditional home in Caird park, Dundee and it proved to be a great success with the highest ever entry of 227 athletes, up 13% on the previous highest total. The event was blessed with sunshine and this helped to add to the success of the event after many athletes had spent the summer competing in the rain

Events took place for every age group from Under 11s right through to seniors and there were a number of successes across all events and ages. In all 29 Championship Best Performances (CBP) were achieved throughout the day. The CBP rush was kicked off from the start of the day when home town athlete Craig Ritchie (Perth Strathtay) broke the record in the Under 17 400m Hurdles event in his first ever attempt at the event, clocking 59.1 seconds, and the performances kept on going. Perhaps the most outstanding record of the day was taken by Arbroath & District’s Jack Garrigan who went to equal second on the Scottish all-time lists in the Under 13 High Jump with a 1.60m leap.

The Under 15 girls age group supplied the greatest number of entrants with 36 girls competing in events across the board. One of the stand out performances went to Pitreavie’s Bethanie Finlayson who equalled the Championship Best in the 200m event, despite winds which were gusting to above 4.5 m/s into the athletes faces at times; this added to Bethanie’s clear victory in the 100m earlier in the day. Not to be outdone her club mate Kirsten Galbraith leapt to an excellent new CBP in the Long Jump of 5.15, again into the teeth of the wind. A further highlight in this age group was Dundee Hawkhill’s Desiree Doogan, who in her first full athletics’ competition threw a new Shot Putt CBP of 10.12 m to highlight a promising future in athletics.

With lower numbers in the senior age groups they were combined with seniors, Under 20s and Under 17s all battling it out on the track and field and this made form some great competitions with many athletes raising to the challenge to record some great performances to round off their season on a high.

A huge thank you goes out to all the officials who gave up their time, as they had done all season, to help the athletes to achieve their best.

For results please click here