Katie Sprints to Victory

Congratulations to JAGS pupil Katie Snowden, who is now ranked first in the UK for her age group after breaking the Surrey County 800m record for U15 girls at the South of England Championships in May this year.

A month earlier in the Surrey Championships, she was beaten by Emelia Gorecka who was previously ranked 1^st  in all the top cross country events during the winter, and had also been the UK U15 champion on the track for over a year. In a reversal of fortunes Katie pipped her to the post on Sunday (25 May), taking the U15 girls’ title at Ashford with ease, a full 0.74 seconds ahead of Gorecka.

Katie’s new record of 2 minutes 11.10 seconds surpasses the previous best performance achieved a decade ago by Olivia Hines of Hercules Wimbledon, who went on to represent Great Britain in the European Junior championships.

Steve Bosley, the Club Secretary and Girls’ Team Manager for Katie’s team, the Herne Hill Harriers (HHH), predicted that her recent achievement is only the beginning of Katie’s success story:

“Only five under 15 girls in the country have run faster over 800m since 2000 and most of those times were achieved later in the summer so there’s a strong possibility that Katie will go faster this year”. 

Katie also earned the U15 record for her team with the fastest time of any Under 15 girl to run with the squad. Katie has consistently broken records for HHH including last year when she was the first to achieve a top ten place in the Under 13 championships.

Although her routine is fairly intensive, Katie still has plenty of free time away from the track; she trains 2-3 times per week involving a long Sunday run in Richmond Park and also trains on Tuesday & Thursday evenings, and enjoys playing netball in her free time.

Despite this early stage in her running career, Mr Bosley has high hopes for Katie as an adult runner:

“As far as the future is concerned she has every chance of becoming an international athlete and Olympian as long as she can remain injury free and focused”.