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B&B Masters Celebrate a great year
To mark a unique double win for our men and
women’s Masters teams in the Southern Counties Veteran’s Athletic Club
Track and Field League Final this year, and with both teams also winning
the Kent Masters Track and Field League too, a celebratory dinner for
the Teams took place at the Clubhouse on 30 November.
Our President (a former World Champion Masters
athlete himself, of course) played host to almost 50 guests, including
most of our team members, plus special guests including Christine Day,
our very own 1948 Olympian, Jack Braughton, plus Arthur Kimber and Rob
Murkin from SCVAC, World Masters Hurdles Champion Barry Ferguson and
Peter Mulholland, respected Masters journalist for magazines like
“Running Fitness”.
PP Mike Martineau, Men’s Masters Team Manager, and
organiser of the event (it was actually Gordon Hickey and Barbara Terry
who came up with the idea!), even managed to get the event to take place
on his 62nd birthday. Nice birthday party! PP Colin Brand gave a
poignant toast to Absent Friends with Jim Day very much in our minds.
Mike welcomed the guests and then Ladies Team Captain, PP Anne Cilia
thanked her gallant team, who, though small in numbers, had managed to
run two teams throughout the Kent League, and stormed off with the
Southern Counties trophy after tying for it in 2006.
Men’s Team Captain, Tom Phillips, gave a
thoughtful speech, regretting the absence of what he called “parity of
esteem” for Masters Athletics, despite it being one of the most
successful elements of our own Club’s sporting endeavours, and far and
away the most successful part of British Athletics today.
The President recognised the achievements of the
many County, regional and National Masters champions present at the
dinner, plus our elite band of European and World Champions. Pete
Mulholland, on behalf of the special guests, presented to the Club a
framed facsimile copy of a page from the Guardian newspaper in 1936
reporting one of Sydney Wooderson’s world record runs.
Photos from Tom Phillips
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