The Essex County Championships were recently held at Melbourne Park Athletics Centre, the first time they had been staged in Chelmsford for 15 years.

With glorious sunshine it was expected that many of the existing track records would tumble and the crowds were not disappointed with 32 being broken.

Two of the major records to go were the mens long jump and womens 100m hurdles.

Stuart Wells took the mens long jump with a leap of 7.57m which not only broke the track record by some way but also took the existing Essex County record which had stood for 24 years and was held by none other than his father.

In the ladies 100m hurdles Chelmsford based international athlete Julie Pratt won in an impressive time of 13.4 seconds, just three tenths of a second outside the Olympic qualifying time.

Other impressive performances came from GB international Paul Head in the mens hammer with a throw of 68.89m, Dave Condon, 16.80m in the shot putt and Debbie Calloway 47 metres in the ladies discus.

Chelmsford Athletic Club were also well represented in the medals with the outstanding performance being Catriona Slater winning both the 100m in 12.2 seconds and 200m in 24.8 seconds.

Other gold medalists for Chelmsford were Catherine Howe in the U17 girls high jump with 1.62 metres and U16 GB International Jordan Lau in the U17 boys long jump with 6.53 metres.

Lau also recently competed at Watford in the South of England U17 Championships and finished second in the long jump.

Jordan led for most of the competition with a jump of 6.65 metres, a distance which is well above the national standard.

This was a good solid performance after a hard winters training at Melbourne Park Athletics Centre and all bodes well for the rest of the season and Laus' next major competition, the Essex Schools Championships on Saturday.

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.