Kirsten McAslan and Laura Maddox win relay silver at European Indoor Championships
University of Bath student Kirsten McAslan and Team Bath AC runner Laura Maddox won women’s 4x400m relay silver medals for Great Britain at the European Indoor Athletics Championships on Sunday.
The young duo teamed up with Kelly Massey and Seren Bundy-Davies to claim the ninth and final medal in Prague for a GB & Northern Ireland team captained by hurdler Lawrence Clarke, a Bath graduate who also trains at the University.
Maddox – coached by Colin Bovell and making her debut in a major international championship – collected the baton from Bundy-Davies in third place and ran 53.9secs to keep Britain in contention.
Biochemistry student McAslan then brought the quartet home in second place in 3:31.79, 0.18 behind France and ahead of bronze-medalists Poland.
McAslan and Maddox had raced against each other in the 400m semi-finals on Friday but neither was able to progress as they finished fourth in 53.49 and sixth in 53.89 respectively.
Clarke was also in action on Friday, finishing a respectable fifth in a 60m hurdles final which saw a clean sweep of medals for French trio Pascal Martinot-Lagarde, Dimitri Bascou and Wilhem Belocian.
Clarke’s time of 7.63 was his quickest of the day, having run 7.65 in the heats and 7.66 in the semis as he snatched the last place in the final by just thousandths of a second from Russia’s Konstantin Shabanov.
“I am actually quite pleased as I made a complete hash of the first two rounds and I have come back and run one of my quicker times of the season,” said management graduate Clarke.
“As I have been saying, the aim of the season has been consistency so to run 7.63 again in the European Championship final, I could not ask for much more.”
