Bethany Shimmen-Smith marked her season opening competition with 3 Indoor personal bests in a great weekend for her at the London Indoor Games at Lee Valley.
She started off on Saturday with a 4.61m result in the long jump which surpassed her best jump indoors from 2023. Her second event was the 200m where she flew round the track in a time of 28.42s to knock down her indoor personal best of 28.78s from last season.
On Sunday Bethany was competing in the sole event of high jump where she has been working on a lot of technical improvements recently. So when she added 7cm onto her indoor lifetime best to finish the competition with a 1.45m clearance it was clear that she was happy with her weekend’s work.
Although this will be her first season as an U20 athlete Bethany will now prepare for the County Indoor Champs in March. Then she will focus her attentions to the challenge of competing at the National Combined Events Champs in July and the English Schools Combined Events in September.
Coach Darren Hatton said “It has been a difficult start to the season for Bethany with her not being able to train at our home track, so we have had to train her over an hour away at the next nearest track once a week and then also offsite at local facilities, even in the inclement weather that we have had. Obviously this is not ideal, but at least this gives her the confidence that she is still making the most of these less than ideal circumstances and progressing very nicely indeed. The season is looking bright for her so it’s now back to the grind and prepare for the County Champs in March.”
Chair, Julien Lawton said "Bethany had an amazing weekend of competition. We welcome more budding Beth's to the club, further information can be found via our website www.thanetac.co.uk"
Darren Hatton
Fantastic result for Beth.
Great effort for maintaining her training over winter and these are the results
Beth, you made us all very proud