STOP PRESS – World Records for Midland Masters

I am very pleased to report that at the BMAF Indoor Championships at Lee Valley, Day One, that two Midland Masters AC members achieved World records, subject to ratification. They are, David Oxland (M60) in the 1500m and Angela Copson. I have at this time no details of Angela’s performance but David ran 4:35.52 to achieve a very unexpected but pleasing victory. Congratulations to them both. I will leave it to David’s own words to describe his performance.

Last year M60 David Oxland’s successful clash with Nick Rose at 3000m was one of the highlights of the championship and so this year the prospect of the line-up in the 1500m, including Oxland, new M60 Dave Butler and the legendary Mike Hager was viewed with some excitement. In fact Oxland was on paper the under-dog this year having been well beaten by Butler and Hager in the cross country international at Belfast last November.

Butler lead from the gun and Oxland made no impression on a 10 metre lead for all of 7 laps by which time Hager was second but Oxland sprinted past both to achieve a new World Record in 4.35.52 taking exactly 1 second off the old one. With Butler comfortably inside the old world record as well at 4.36.04 and Hager inside the old British record, the trio would have taken the first three places in the M55 race as well.

Oxland said afterwards ” I had virtually given up with 150 metres to go when Mike overtook me but then I noticed that Dave was losing his fluency, after a superb bit of front running,and I decided to kick with 100 to go. I would have been happy just to beat these class runners and the World Record was an amazing bonus in my third year in this age group.”

PS: David went on to win a gold medal in the 800m on Day 2 being beaten by an Irish Guest runner whilst suffering from a cold made worse by the dry atmosphere in the arena.