ICXCAC take on LUCA Indoors Championships with over 50 athletes

After taking on several Cross-Country races as well as the Brighton 10K, ICXCAC went on to compete at the London Universities and Colleges Athletics (LUCA) Indoors Championships on the 25th of November. As usual, the runners decided to meet up at Beit before making their way to the event. However, the journey was rather long so after an adventurous trip via the London underground, overground and bus services, ICXCAC finally reached North London’s Lee Valley Athletics Centre around noon.

As they got there, the Imperial crew settled down in a crowd of 276 athletes from 24 clubs, 55 of which were from Imperial! They then had time to get changed, get their bibs and start warming up as the first events were scheduled to begin at 13:00, and there was no way Imperial were missing any events: they had the highest participation with a massive 187 individual events entered!

As the day began, athletes made their way to the pole vault, high jump and 60m hurdles starting line, ready to make the most out of their day. The first events proved to everyone that Imperial wasn’t there to spectate: Noël Rimensberger took 3rd in the Men’s 60m Hurdle in 9.44s and then 3rd again for the Men’s High Jump with an impressive 1m80, followed closely in 4th by Baptiste Thebert.

The Women’s team did an equally inspiring performance as sisters Viktoria and Katherina Kern, and club captain Alex Mundell respectively took 1st, 2nd and 3rd for the Pole Vault competition, undoubtedly leaving the whole stadium stunned.

“Imperial took 1st, 2nd, and 3rd for the Pole Vault competition, undoubtedly leaving the whole stadium stunned”

After such a bright start to the day, many track competitions followed, with distance varying from 60m to 800m for the heats, as well as some more field events. After their great performance earlier, Noël and Baptiste went on to dominate the long and triple jump, grabbing respectively 2nd and 3rd then 1st and 3rd for these events. Marta Von Ginkel also managed to reach an impressive 9.67m for her triple jump, reaching a well-deserved 3rd place.

After a short break in events, what were surely the most inspiring and intense events were coming up: the track events finals. The evening events started slightly before 6pm with the 1500m final, where Kate Olding smashed it and took gold in just over 5 minutes for the Women’s race, and on the Men’s team fresher James Millet did a great performance coming in 3rd overall with 4:19.36, followed closely by trail Captain Henry Hart and Men’s Captain Lewis Jackson, all placing in the top 10. Further down the line, Alex Mundell reached for another medal as she took 3rd in the Women’s 400m final. Kate Olding then went on to win the Women’s 800m in 2:23 while Jonathan Wong took 2nd – another huge performance and keeping Imperial very high in the rankings.

At last, it was time for the much anticipated 3000m finals, which was probably the most intense of the day: Henry Hart took 9th overall for the men’s finishing in 9:53, followed closely by Fergus Johnson in 12th, Kirill Mikhaylov in 13th and Men’s Captain Lewis Jackson, who arrived first in the second heat. As for the women’s race, club captain Alex Mundell treated us with an inspiring performance, with a huge crowd of ICXCAC runners cheering her along the race as she obtained a much deserved 2nd place in 11:21 minutes.

The last scoring races of the day were the 4x200m relays, where Imperial also did brilliantly by placing 3rd in both the Women’s and Men’s race. Finally, the traditional mascot race took place and this year, Mihai Vanea wore our beloved mascot’s costume, coming last but definitely being the best-looking mascot of the day.

As the day ended, the last medals were awarded and results were declared; Imperial College came 3rd overall, only one point behind King’s College with UCL in 1st place, and had two athletes tied 2nd as LUCA MVPs with an impressive 8 points each: Kate Olding and Noël Rimensberger, so a huge shout-out to them!

After such a successful day, Imperial’s athletes made their way to the Kosk Turkish restaurant where the mood was very festive: the tasty meal was accompanied by a musical performance worthy of Metric as the staff played Turkish music then sang Happy Birthday to customers.

After the meal, the team decided to call it a day and made their way to the bus station to go home, exhausted by a long but very successful day, full of athletic successes and much banter, what else could they have asked for? Until next time, cheerio!

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