Success for athletes in Achilles Relays

This year’s 40th anniversary Achilles Relays at the famous Iffley Road stadium in Oxford was a notable success for Haileybury. Twenty five independent schools compete for these prestigious trophies each year.

The U17 boys (Bertie Griffith-Jones, Matthew Atkinson, Hugo Henderson and Joseph Jawad – pictured above) won the 4x100m hurdles, beating Millfield in the final. In their heat, they knocked out the reigning champions, Haberdashers, with Hugo Henderson running a split of 14.5 which was an excellent time! In the final we set off well, with Joseph Jawad coming in second by 5 metres. Bertie Griffiths-Jones then took over and, having never run in a hurdles race before the heat, his completion of the 100m was a fantastic piece of brave running.

Matthew Atkinson pulled us back from 20m down over 100m to be in the lead with a fantastic clean run, intimidating his opposite number into completely freezing over his last few hurdles! Henderson then brought us home in style. The same team (with Mason in for Jawad) also came third in the 4×400 relay.

There were a number of other great successes, with the girls’ relay team winning their heat by 20m and the U15 4×800 team coming third.