Brunel’s athletes produced their best performance in over 20 years to take silver overall in the British Universities and Colleges (BUCS) Athletics Championships.
A strong performance from both men’s and women’s teams saw Brunel take second place in both categories from a field of 110 institutions. The final haul of 16 medals saw the combined team comfortably placed second overall.
One of the stand-out performances of the championship came from women’s captain Amy Holder, the Brunel Sports Scholar who captured a BUCS championship gold medal for a third time with a huge throw of 54.07m.
Holder’s Sport, Health & Exercise Sciences classmate, Kayanna Reid, also enjoyed the limelight with a gold in the triple jump. Last year’s bronze medallist smashed her previous performance with a personal best-best effort of 12.73 m.
Kayanna Reid scooped gold in the triple jump and her bronze last year
Brunel’s third gold medal came courtesy of Welshman Osaze Aghedo, again in the triple jump, who hopped, stepped and jumped to a lifetime best of 15.40m.
Meanwhile, the Brunel team also scooped eight silver medals, with perhaps the most excitement being elicited by Darcey Kuypers, an athlete whose sprinting career has gone on to new levels in recent months. The Medway sprinter clinched silver in the 100 metres with a PB of 11.78 secs before adding a second PB in the 200 metres (24.23 secs), in which she finished fourth overall.
First-year scholar Holly Mills, a multi-eventer, took on the specialist hurdlers in the 100-metre hurdles in which she won silver with a European U20 Championships qualifying time of 13.49 secs (PB). Mills also came fourth in the high jump (1.68 m).
Osaze Aghedo claimed a personal best on his way to gold
Debutante Katie Head picked up where older brother, Brunel alumnus Thomas Head, left off last year, with a silver in the hammer throw (58.60m), whilst 2019 BUCS Indoor pole vault champion Ellie McCartney added an outdoor silver (3.80m).
Also soaring to great heights was Annika Teska, who took silver in the high jump with a PB of 1.74 m. On the men’s team, a man who wins BUCS medals with clockwork regularity, James McMurray, turned on the magic for a silver in the 1500 metres (3:51.57 mins) and Thomas Pitkin followed suit in the 400 metres (48.21 secs).
The final silver came courtesy of the women’s 4 × 100-metre relay quartet of Izzy Bryant, Modupe Shokunbi, Synne Frydenlund and Darcey Kuypers (47.53 secs).
For further information on Brunel's sports courses, please visit www.brunel.ac.uk/sport-health-and-exercise-sciences
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