Whilst most of the UK had their attention turned North toward Laura Muir and the rest of Team GB winning medal-after-medal in Glasgow, if you had happened to look West you will have been lucky enough to witness an excting day of action between Wales & England U20s.
On March 3rd 2019, the annual U20 indoor match between England & Wales served up an exciting affair complete with close races and record-breaking performances, all of which was successfully managed from start to finish by OpenTrack’s Competition Management System.
The day began as it was to go on with the men’s Shot Put providing a final round winning throw of 17.62m by England’s Lewis Byng; not quite enough for a PB for Byng but enough for a meeting record distance. All results were posted here.
With the friendly Welsh Athletics officials buying into the OpenTrack system all field events were recorded live, with throws and jumps online and on the results platform just seconds after the attempt was made.
The resulting reduced workload for the officials was one thing but with the competition commentator James Thie (also winner of the Master’s mile in 4:25.45) announcing the jumps and throws as the events took place, along with the ever-updating match scores, it made for a much more entertaining and followable experience for the packed-out crowd.
First time user Darran Williams, Welsh Athletics’ Competition Officer, over-saw the competition and was in charge of using OpenTrack’s Competition Management System for the meeting. Speaking with him after the event, Darran found the system “very easy to understand” and was excited about how “moving forward this will reduce official’s time before, during and after competitions”.
With surely many of Great Britain’s stars of the future in attendance, this was a tremendously fun and successful meeting for both Welsh Athletics and OpenTrack.
Notable (meeting record performances) were achieved by:
Lewis Byng, ENG, Shot Put
Jazz Sears, ENG, Triple Jump, 12.49m
Ella Turner, ENG, 400m, 55.84s
Dominic Ogbechie, ENG, Long Jump, 7.66m
Ellie Booker, ENG, 200m, 24.58s
Jeremiah Azu, WAL, 60m, 6.75s
Amy Hunt, ENG, 60m, 7.37s