Prestwold Hall is the country home of the Packe-Drury -Lowe family & within its 2500 acres is an ex airfield which has been converted to a driving circuit with a track measuring 2.75k round. All this would be meaningless unless and until the sport of duathlon found this excellent off road facility a few years ago. Prestwold has been an ideal venue for the East Mids Youth & Children series and the East Midlands Committee decided to take on the organising of the 2016 event. Prestwold was race 3 in the highly successful and much admired east Midlands junior series following events at Scampton and Duston
The weather on Sunday 15 May was mainly bright and brezzy; its always brezzy at prestwold and 300 athletes were entered for the five events. It was decided to start boys & girls together which proved interesting in a number of the races as the girls featured at the front of most races. The Youths were first off & Neve Hatton was certainly very impressive in dominating her race ahead of Poppy Scoffings & recording her third victory in three races. In the male youths Hayden Greaves raced well to finish ahead of Max Cawthra.
Tri star 3 with 78 athletes was the next, with Elsbeth Grant proving strong in both disciplines to beat Lizz Edge with Hannah Brayer taking third. In the boys just 16 seconds separated three athletes with the stronger bike rider, Kieran Smith able to hold off the fast running Xavi Salcedo & Skip Snelson.
The biggest field was tri Star 2 with over 100 starters and just 20 minutes were required for the first 3 boys & girls to complete. Freya Batkin was strong throughout and needed to be, to hold off Emily Crookes for her third victory in three events. In the boys just 13 seconds separated the top 3 with Tom Hattee also making it 3 from 3 followed by Sam Hughes and Thomas Dixon.
Tri star 1 was another great head to head with Charlottee Cullen finishing ahead of Nancy Read and Rebecca Van Aardt in the girls race and Jasper Adamson winning again from Jenson Buttrick. In the tri start first to finish were Willam Brown (boys) and Edit Bott (girls).
A big thanks to the sponsors (Brandfour, APSS, OSB Events, Sempers Consultancy and Sturgess Volvo of Leicester), volunteers and to committee members who put on race; most noteworthy being the ex & current chairs of EMT region; Aimee Stocker & Paul Aubrey .
Dave Bellingham
