Tom Marshall Cracks The Mile Barrier On Road To Gold Coast Games

Tom Marshall has become only the 13^th Welsh athlete to break the magical four minute barrier for the mile.

The 28-year-old Cardiff AAC middle distance star further underlined his potential for the Commonwealth Games on the Gold coast next year by clocking 3 min, 58.31 sec in the Morton Mile at the Morton Games in Dublin this week.

His latest personal best goes alongside a Commonwealth Games A standard in the 1500 metres at London’s Olympic Park last week (3.37.45) and an 800 metre best (1.48.68) in Watford last month. Slowly, but surely, he is catching up to the times posted by his coach, double Welsh Commonwealth Games athlete James Thie.

Thie just edges the 1500 with a best of 3.37.06 and is hanging on in fifth place to Marshall’s sixth in the Welsh mile rankings with 3.57.86. He has already overtaken him in the 800 metre rankings.

It is turning into a bit of a golden summer for Wales’ middle distance athletes with two more prime candidates for the Gold Coast next April, Rowan Axe and Dewi Griffiths, running faster than ever before. Axe, who has also hit the A standard at 1500 metres with Cardiff team mate Marshall, clocked an 800 metre pb this week of 1.48.78.

Meanwhile, Swansea Harrier Griffiths moved into fifth place on the Welsh all-time list with a magnificent fifth place in Dublin with a tie of 13.33.60. There were 18 runners from all over the world in a quality field and Griffiths stripped almost 17 seconds off his previous best to go sub-14 for the third time this summer.

With a 10,000 metre A standard already in the bag, Griffiths now has a B standard at 5,000 and only needs to improve by another three seconds to put himself in with a chance of doubling up at what would be a second Commonwealth Games.

Griffiths has now moved into fourth place on the Welsh all-time ranking list behind Ian Hamer (13.09.80), Steve Jones (13.18.6) and Tony Simmons (13.21.2) and has improved by 20 seconds over the 5,000 distance in two years.