Simon Child won the A-string triple jump and set a personal best in the 400m hurdles for a depleted Highgate Harriers outfit in Saturday's penultimate Southern League division one meeting at Kingston. Despite being without their top eight

By Jonny Weeks

Simon Child won the A-string triple jump and set a personal best in the 400m hurdles for a depleted Highgate Harriers outfit in Saturday's penultimate Southern League division one meeting at Kingston.

Despite being without their top eight distance runners as well as two specialist throwers, Harriers finished fourth and drop just two places to seventh overall.

Harriers finished with a total of 105.5 points behind league leaders Exeter (153), second-placed Thames Valley Harriers and third-placed Hearts Phoenix.

Child recorded 12.70m to land the triple jump and came second with 54.8secs in the 400m hurdles.

Meanwhile, team-mate Mathew Dore-Weeks came second in the B 400m hurdles in a personal best time of 57.8secs.

Harriers won a thrilling 4x400m relay in 3mins 24.1secs beating Thames Valley Harriers and Exeter.

All four Harriers ran good times - Simon Child (52.4secs), Daniel Lavipour (51.6secs), Atak Diing (51.1secs) and Pat Davis anchoring (49.0secs).

Davis also won the A 800m in 1min 57.4secs, while Diing won the B 800m in 2mins 0.5secs.

Ollie Barnet gathered valuable points when he jumped 3m in the A pole vault to take third place.

Meanwhile, Highgate's 15-year-old school boy from City of London School, William Evans, recorded 1.10m for the B pole vault for equal second.

Highgate's sprint team came second in the 4x100m relay. One of the team's sprinters, Francis Asante, also recorded a personal best in the long jump of 5.55m to come fourth in the A.

Dore-Weeks and Barnet finished third in the A and B 110m hurdles respectively.

Battling Scotsman Peter Downie added another third place in the A 1500m (4mins 13.7secs).

Kristian Clarke was second in the B 100m in 11.6secs.

Frenchman Thierry Lebretton was busy in the field with a fourth place in the A javelin with 44m and third in the hammer with 22.95m.

Harriers compete in their final Southern League meet on, August 4 in north Devon.

The previous week Highgate's Jose Berretta came through the field in the latter stages to take 17th place out of 83 runners in the Sri Chimnoy 10 miles race in Battersea Park. He clocked a time of 66mins.01secs.

The winner was international Kassa Tadesse (57mins 37secs) while Kenneth Heney (60mins 37secs) of London Heathside was sixth.