Altrincham and District Athletic Club land a treble (From Messenger Newspapers)

Altrincham and District Athletic Club land a treble

7:26pm Tuesday 25th September 2012 in Sport

ALTRINCHAM and District Athletic Club have secured a memorable treble, with victory at the North of England 6-stage road relays at Leigh Sports Village on Saturday.

This added to the Club's previous successes at the Northern Cross Country Championships and the 5K Road Championships earlier in the year.

The team were led out by Nick Leigh on leg one, who made an excellent start, coming back in 17th place on the most competitive of all the legs, but importantly no crucial ground had been lost to Altrincham's main rivals.

On leg two, Mohammed Abu-Rezeq ran a storming leg, taking Altrincham into the medal positions, running the 2nd fastest leg of the whole day in 17.41. This was quickly followed by Dave Norman who maintained the momentum, and 3rd place, with a leg time of 18.39.

On leg 4, Matt Barnes moved the team up one place to second with the joint fourth fastest time of 17.49, but at that stage, Liverpool Harriers held sway with a 20 second advantage.

However, Altrincham still had a trick up their sleeve, in the form of 2012 Olympian, Romanian Marius Ionescu, who swept into the lead, matching Barnes' time of 17.49 and opening up an advantage of nearly 30 seconds over the other teams.

This left Andy Norman, who had battled injury concerns to his foot to compete, to maintain the gap to Liverpool and Salford. However, such was the margin of victory at the end that Norman had the luxury of easing up on the final lap to acknowledge the congratulations of the Altrincham supporters.