Amy Hunt
Amy was feeling good coming into the English School games as training had been going well and she had been running consistently for a number of weeks.
This year Amy has moved up a year group to under 17 in national rankings and Intermediate Girls for schools competitions.
The School Games were held in Birmingham this year at the Alexander Stadium which was the venue the previous weekend to the British Athletics Team Trials.
Again, like previous years, Amy was competing in 100m. Friday was heats in the morning with semi-final early afternoon with the Final on the Saturday.
Amy was in heat 4 and had a nice relaxed run to finish first in 12.13s, which although was only the third fastest heat, Amy conserved energy by not running too fast and eased down considerably 10 metres out from the finish line.
In the semi-final Amy had some very quick girls as competition but again, had a nice easy run and finished first in 11.77s which proved to be the fastest time in the semi-finals.
This gave Amy great confidence going into the final, and a good night's sleep saw her feeling ready and refreshed.
In the final Amy had two very quick starters either side of her and her main rivals in terms of time were on her right hand side. After a reasonable start Amy was up near the front after 10 metres and never looked back as she scorched home in 11.76s and a good two metres in front of second place. The time was the second quickest in the UK this year, with Amy's 11.66s run at the Loughborough International being the quickest. She was over the moon to have won again to make it three wins out of three at these championships.
The first two finishers in each discipline at this competition at intermediate level are then chosen to represent English Schools against Ireland, Wales and Scotland in Dublin on 15th July which Amy is ecstatic to be going to. This goes some way in making up for not being eligible for selection for the English Youth Commonwealth team as Amy was too young in
accordance with the English Athletics selection policy of taking athletes born in 2000 and 2001 and Amy was born in 2002.
Amy told Radio Newark Sport;
I am extremely happy to win gold in the 100m at English Schools for a 3rd time and honoured to represent England next week in Dublin. I really enjoyed the experience again and love to run at Alexander Stadium a week after British Trials. I was pleased with my series of runs and it was good to have the 3 races over 2 days as a practice for future competitions.
