Going for gold

Over the weekend 4 of our members travelled to Sheffield to compete in the BUCS Nationals. We had Marli Jessops and David Corsy-Dewu compete in Athletics, Sophia Potter in Fencing, and Alicia Enslin in Swimming.

Marli Jessops had an incredible day, competing in the 60m hurdles. After smashing the first heat, Marli went on to compete in the finals to bring back an incredible first place gold medal.

There’s so much more we could say about Marli’s weekend, but we’ve got a few words from the winner herself:

‘I competed in the 60m hurdles, it was my first time representing the University and going to BUCS, however competing there at Sheffield the weekend before for my own nationals it was a whole different experience still. I won my heat comfortably in 8.43 seconds, while the rest of the girls all pbed into the 8.5s. I knew it was going to be a tense final from experience, not just for me, but the other competitors had a lot more in the bag despite a lot of competition heat and gassing up from the commentary. I performed well and winning in a PB of 8.28 seconds, only 0.05 seconds off the record set by my training partner that I'm going to break next time.

With this winning time, it makes me ranked 5th in the world and there’s still more to come for me next weekend at the British champs live on the BBC. Overall, it was a great experience, the venue, the hype, all the other students from different Universities came together was exciting stuff. I am very happy to come away being the BUCS 2022 national champion and looking forward to see what the next outdoor BUCS champs brings me.’

 

David Corsy-Dewu competed in the 60m sprint at BUCS and here is how his weekend went

"Having the experience to participate in the BUCS Championship was awesome. Having had a challenging two years of on and off injuries, which disallowed me from participating in my sport freely, I am glad to be able to move and participate again.

The weather was worse than expected with Storm Eunice, however, the wind did not affect any of the sports as the BUCS Nationals were all held in world class indoor facilities. Having the opportunity to watch other athletes who represented our University was excellent, they did amazingly to perform and came out healthily, and even victorious for those who achieved their goals. I look forward to representing the University again."

We're so unbelievably proud of all of our members who competed at BUCS Nationals this weekend, we know you're all going to go on to achieve some amazing things.