More medals for Stratford AC's Brennan at World Masters Indoor Championships

STRATFORD Athletic Club athlete Phil Brennan picked up his second medal from the World Masters Indoor Championships in the Polish city of Toruń by taking bronze in the 800m final, report by David Jones.

As reported last week, Brennan had started the championships in superlative style by claiming sixth place in the 3,000m before going on to lead Great Britain home to a magnificent team gold in the cross country.

Just a couple of days after that gold medal performance, he was on duty again in the 800m final, winning the bronze medal to add to his earlier gold.

His time of 3:05.78 was almost 20 seconds quicker than the fourth-placed runner. In second place was Brennan’s team-mate Victor Shirley, who just lost out to Albert Walter of Germany in the race for gold.

Then it was the 1,500m final for the ever active Brennan.

He started steadily in his fourth race in just six days, before deciding to throw caution to the wind, finally finishing in fifth place in a time of 6:18.75, just eight seconds off the bronze medal position.

The race was won by Britain’s Victor Shirley in 6:08.

Finally, the selectors asked Brennan to drop down an age group for the 4x200m relay.

Running the third leg, he helped the team finish in second place in the heats with a time of 2:07.11, but they finished just outside the medals in fourth place, missing out on the bronze medal by two seconds.

Brennan’s performances helped Britain finish in fourth place in the overall medal table, behind Germany, USA and host country Poland.

For Paul Hawkins, the other Stratford AC member representing Great Britain, there was a less than happy outcome.

Competing in the 10km racewalk, Hawkins completed the race in what he considered to be a satisfactory time of 62:50, helping Britain into the silver medal position in the team standings.

However, he was to find out a couple of hours after the race had finished that he had been disqualified.

This belated ruling denied Britain the silver medal. Such is the technical nature of this event that only Poland and Latvia, in first and second place respectively, qualified for medals after all of the other teams were disqualified from the race.