Track and field team rack up nine medals, including six golds, to show UEL’s pedigree much to the delight of their High Performance manager

The University of East London underlined its reputation as one of the UK’s leading universities for athletics by winning nine medals, six of them gold, at the British Universities and Colleges Sport Outdoor Athletics Championships.

UEL’s sprinters proved the stars of the show by winning gold in the men’s and women’s 4x100 metres relays for the second successive year at the three-day meeting in Bedford over the Bank Holiday weekend.

Both quartets won their races comfortably, with times of 46.25 seconds for the women and 41.00 seconds for the men.

European under-20 200 metres champion Maya Bruney, who was part of the victorious women’s relay team, added a further gold with victory in the individual women’s 400 metres in a lifetime best of 53.10 seconds.

She said: “We have really good individual sprinters. For both teams to come away 4x100m gold medallists for the second year in a row, I think that just shows the quality of our strength and conditioning programme and our support. Everything’s in place.”

It was also a case of déjà vu for Paralympic thrower Vanessa Wallace, who retained her BUCS titles in the seated shot put and discus.

Competing in the F34 classification, Wallace matched her golden double in 2017 by winning the discus with a throw of 18.17 metres before taking the shot put title with a throw of 7.17 metres.

Khai Riley-La Borde completed the UEL gold rush by winning men’s 110 metres hurdles in 14.00 seconds.

To add to UEL’s medal tally, there were silver medals for Chris Kandu in the men’s high jump and Jordan Andrew in the ambulant men’s 200 metres, while former GB athlete J.J. Jegede took bronze in the men’s long jump.

Matthew Tansley, UEL’s High Performance manager, said: “It’s been an another fantastic weekend for UEL and UELSports.

“To be able to win both the men’s and women’s 4 x 100m relays for two consecutive years is something really special and very rare, while Vanessa Wallace continued her fantastic dominance at these championships.

“We have an incredible team of staff and athletes that came together brilliantly and demonstrated just how serious we are about performance sport at UEL.”