Athletes at Brecon Athletics Club have had considerable success at the various Welsh age group indoor athletics championships over two recent weekends.

Initially it was the senior and U15 Championships held over the last weekend in January.

Five Brecon athletes competed, bringing home two medals.

U15 Ruby Herdman had a great 1500m where she recorded a 5-secondpersonal best of 4-minutes and 48 seconds and took a well-deserved silver medal behind only an athlete from Swansea who broke the championship record.

On the same day Brychan Price-Davies placed fifth in a high standard 1500m race, while lower year U15s Rosie Evans and Amelie Murphy gained some valuable championship experience competing in the 60m and long jump.

The following day Tristan Cumberland stepped up from U17 to senior in an effort to get a 3km personal best to use towards his triathlon selection criteria. A cold and a lack of entries meant that Tristan just missed his target time, but he did gain a Welsh silver medal and get to stand on the podium with commonwealth games athlete Ieuan Thomas.

On the Saturday of the second weekend there was a bronze medal in the U20 high jump for Anya Gardner.

This was swiftly followed by a very near miss by training partner John Bennett, who opened his season with a strong 1,75m, losing a podium place only on countback.

Both of these athletes have only had two practice sessions in freezing conditions under patchy floodlights at Penlan. Not the ideal conditions and nothing like the indoor facilities that their city-based opponents enjoy.

The final day of competition was probably the most successful for the club.

John Bennett returned and this time took home a gold medal after an excellent personal best performance in the 60m hurdles.

Dan Ricketts qualified for the 400m final with a 0.5 seconds personal best and then went on to knock a huge 1.4 seconds off that mark in the final. Despite finishing 4th, when you are an up-and-coming athlete personal bests are more important.

There was another gold medal to come also as Jack Organ ran a strong U17 1500m race. With a kick at about 400m he opened up a very comfortable lead and as well as winning recorded a new personal of 4 minutes and 17 seconds.

A very pleasing number of the club’s middle distance athletes have been selected to run for Powys Schools in the WSAA Champs next Saturday at Penlan.

At the county champs last Wednesday in Newtown, Brecon AC had one winner, two thirds and a fourth and fifth.