2nd July 2024
Sports league
LM Community Track, London Stadium
Since its inception, this Newham London Sprints Meeting has been one of the most popular destinations for 100m and 200m runners in the UK.
Meeting director Tony Shiret worked with sports promoter Laura Hillyard on this now famous event. Together, with Luke Smallwood from Just Timing and Victor Nutakor from Virtual Media TV, they produced a regular schedule of these now famous sprint competitions in London and elevated the presentation of speed meets.
“Our ambition lies with enhancing the provision and production of the sprint events, developing a platform that allows for athletes not only to perform but to showcase their personalities. The interest in sprints can be maintained if people continue to have a regular platform to engage with it”.
Subsequently some of the UK’s top sprinters have regularly featured at these events since its inception. Last season, five of the top 10 British male and three of the top 10 British female sprinters achieved their season bests in Newham.
The meet has been rebranded to ‘Stratford Speed’, and regularly achieves more than 350 entries in the 100m, there could be around 40 races over the distance throughout event duration, culminating in the elite races. The line-ups, safe to say, are really exciting.
This year it has seen a plethora of top talent attend: Eugene Amo-Dadzie, nicknamed the ‘fastest accountant’, had a breakthrough season last year after running a stunning 9.93 and going joint-fourth on the UK all-time list. Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake, double European 200m silver medallist and CJ Ujah in his first full outdoor season currently since serving a 22-month doping ban, that ended in June last year.
So for Russel Taib it was worth a midweek trip down to the capital from his midlands base to squeeze in, amongst a busy week of training and work, an evening at this competition and participate in a few senior 100m races.
The first 100m meant to start at 8.15pm was a little delayed as with 28 heats just for men on the night and lots of false starts the schedule inevitably shifted as the evening progressed. But at the gun it was third place for Russel with 10.67, and on to the second race.
With the shifting schedule it was closer to 10.00pm for the second 100m, and another third place for Russel, and 10.65 on the clock.
It was then a rapid dash across London to catch one of the last trains back to Loughborough, and a late night return home!
But despite the inevitable ensuing tiredness the next day at training and then work, It was worth the effort and commitment for the athlete for some excellent competitive racing. And to gauge his training results and get feedback elements for further improvement in his favoured 200m discipline over the shorter 100m distance with high level competition.