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- Bethan Davies And Charlotte Evans Break Welsh Records As Clara Evans Makes Her Marathon Mark
By Owen Morgan
Two Welsh endurance athletes were in national record breaking form in Yorkshire over the weekend.
On Saturday, race walker Bethan Davies set a new British 35k record in Leeds, while Sunday saw Charlotte Arter break the 37-year-old Welsh 10k record in the same city.
Davies was making her bow over the 35k distance at the British Grand Prix of Race Walking.
And what a debut it was as the Cardiff athlete won in a new British best time of 3:00.24.
This year has seen a spectacular return to form and fitness for the multiple Welsh and British champion after two seasons plagued by illness.
Davies, who won a bronze medal at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games,had been struggling with a series of immune-related illness and viruses.
But in August she won the Welsh 10,000m title in a nomination standard time for next summer’s Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
Now Davies has made an impressive debut over the 35km distance, which will be contested at next summer’s World Athletics Championships in Oregon.
Twenty-four hours after Davies’ exploits at the Brownlee Centre, her Cardiff Athletics team–mate Arter was continuing her own dazzling run of form at the Leeds Abbey Dash.
The previous weekend Arter, who has twice lowered the Welsh 5k record on the road this year, won the senior women’s race at the Cardiff Cross Challenge, which was making its debut as a World Athletics Cross Country Tour Gold Standard event.
Six days later, she was setting a Welsh record as she finished second to Jess Piasecki over 10K, clocking 31:32 – well inside of the 32.15 set by Angela Tooby in New York back in 1984.
Arter thought she had broken the record when she won the same event two years ago, but it was subsequently discovered the course had been measured 23 metresshort and the times were deemed void as far as records were concerned.
On Sunday, a third Cardiff athlete produced an outstanding performance at the Rotterdam Marathon.
Clara Evans, a training partner of Arter, ran a new personal best as she finished fourth in 2:31.19 – the second fastest time by a Welsh woman.
Rotterdam you didn’t disappoint!
Over the moon to come away with a new PB of 2:31:19, to go 2nd on the Welsh all-time list and get the European standard.
Plus we got to stay on a boat ⛴📸@evertwoutersen https://t.co/S7FxudE63V
— Clara Evans (@ClaraEvans4) October 25, 2021
Only Natasha Cockram has run faster with 2:30.03 with Evans’s time also a European qualifying mark.
Sunday also saw 8,000 runners turn-out for the ABP Newport Wales Marathon and 10k, where four course records were broken.
The men’s marathon winner was Bridgend AC’s Adam Bowden. The Great Britain triathlete clocked 2:20.06 on what was his marathon debut. The women’s race was won by Rebecca Gallop in 2:44.07.
The men’s 10K was won by London’s Paulos Surafel, ahead of Cardiff pair James Heneghan, who claimed a big new personal best of 29:54 and James Hunt with 30:00. Bristol and West’s Hannah Anderson won the women’s 10K in 34:22.
Serial winning Welsh Paralympian Richie Powell won the wheelchair race ahead of Ron Price and Les Hampton.
