Edinburgh blunder as Glasgow keep the cup at Kelvin Hall

Glasgow University retained their Scottish Universities Indoor Championships title by the narrowest of margins at Kelvin Hall last week.

It was tough luck on runners-up Edinburgh University, who would have reclaimed the crown they surrendered last year had they only entered one team in the afternoon’s 4x400m relays.

Glasgow also took home the Appleton Trophy, a separate cup contested only by Edinburgh and Glasgow. In the overall standings, Edinburgh Napier were well in the midfield, finishing ninth, with Heriot-Watt and Queen Margaret Universities adrift in twelfth and thirteenth. Glasgow Caledonian emerged strongly in sixth, while Strathclyde clung on well to the pack in eleventh.

Edinburgh began the day well, with Claire Taylor and Kirsty Barr securing first and third in the women’s 60m Hurdles. However, the men were edged out by fractions of a second in the 60m sprints, leaving Napier to take up the capital city’s baton. Donald Tod made the semi-finals, but Oliver Lawson went one better, eventually finishing fourth in a lightning-quick final. In the women’s final, Napier’s Holly Belch was pipped to the win by Glasgow’s Jo Patterson.

In the field, Kirsty Barr of Edinburgh was in thick of the medals again, taking women’s Long Jump gold ahead of the Glasgow pair Jo Patterson and Fiona Laurie. In the men’s, Donald Tod of Napier and Charlie Stainforth of Edinburgh took first and third resepctively – each removing any lingering 60m disappointment. Elsewhere, Kirsty Barr headed Courtney Macguire, and Ray Bobrownicki cleared 2.15m, as Edinburgh dominated the High Jump to take two golds and a silver, while Macguire took another silver from the Pole Vault.

Back on track, the 800m produced two silvers for Caledonian, courtesy of Scott MacAulay and Jennifer Hannah. The women’s race was won by Glasgow’s Laura Muir, and it was she who then took the gold in the 400m. The men’s 400m saw an Edinburgh athlete once again edged out by a tight qualifying system – Isaac Baldwin the one to miss out.

In the 200m, Edinburgh’s Oliver Calvo-Platero did well in reaching the semi-finals, maintaining strong pace after the 60m and Long Jump. Likewise team-mate Charlie Stainforth who readched the final, where nobody could live with Ryan Oswald of Heriot-Watt and his staggering winning time of 22.29. Jo Patterson of Glasgow took women’s gold by a tenth of a second from Claire Taylor, with Napier’s Holly Belch not far behind in third after an exhilerating race.

Queen Margaret’s Becky Dunphy picked up good points for fifth in the 1500m, with Edinburgh’s Steph Lawrie and Nicci Chapman ahead of her in third and fourth. Lawrie later won the 3000m and, with the men’s and women’s races running together, hounded Caledonian’s third-placed Murray McDonald to the line. After fifteen laps neither wanted to give up, and McDonald edged it by 0.04 seconds; a thrilling end to a tense race.

The standings remained fairly even through the Triple Jump and Shot Putt, so it was left to the final events – the relays, where points count double – to break the Edinburgh-Glasgow deadlock. Edinburgh’s two men’s teams beat Glasgow into third in the 4x200m, but a clumsy baton change into the final leg of the women’s race cost Edinburgh the victory to which they had been cruising.

The 4x400m, though, was not the crunch battle it should have been – thanks largely to Edinburgh’s failure to enter either a men’s or a women’s team. The oversight allowed Glasgow to canter to 24 points, and overall victory by a margin of only seven points. It was visibly tough for the Edinburgh team to stomach such a defeat, but that didn’t dampen Glasgow’s celebrations after a titanic, day-long struggle.