Last updated at 08:33, Friday, 21 March 2008

RUNNING sensation Laura Park has beaten the UK's best young runners - now she’s going to take on the world’s.

Title
Author
Copyright

Description

After winning the InterCounties Cross Country U20 championship last week she has been selected to compete for Great Britain in the World Championships on March 30.

And it will be a chance for the whole country to see the rising star of British distance running as the championships are to be screened by the BBC.

Park, who is still only 16, won the Inter-Counties U20 crown at Wollaton Park, Nottingham.

She entered the U20 in a bid to gain selection for the GB team for the World Championships at Edinburgh.

After shrugging off a slight illness in the morning she took her place on the start line of the 6km course - three laps around the grounds of Wollaton stately home.

Park took the initiative from the gun and dictated the pace for the first lap and a half but then Emma Pallant of Hampshire decided to make an early bid for home and had opened a 60m-gap by the end of the second lap.

This did not faze Park and during the last lap she gradually closed on Pallant until she was on her shoulder by the final 400m.

Park then made her bid for gold out-sprinting Pallant in the final stages and taking the title by five seconds. Pallant took silver and Lilly Partridge of Surrey was third.

All three gained selection for the World Championships.

At the same event Park’s Ellenborough AC team-mate, Hannah Bethwaite, competing in the U13 race and came an excellent 12th in a field of over 300 athletes and in doing so gained enough points to take the UK cross challenge series title.

On Tuesday Park, with Ellenborough AC team-mates Paul Richardson and Sam Johnston - who are all former pupils of Dearham School - returned to the school for its annual primary cross-country event.

Richardson and Johnston acted as the hares for the races which involved 78 pupils from six schools - Dearham, Richmnd Hill, Thomlinson Juniors, Maryport Juniors, Bridekirk-Dovenby, and Broughton.

Park presented the winners with their medals. The individual winners were Tania Wilson, of Broughton School, and Dearham pupil Ben Tyrer - both also members of Ellenborough AC. Dearham won both the boys’ and girls’ team categories.

First published at 19:39, Thursday, 20 March 2008
Published by http://www.timesandstar.co.uk