JERSEY athlete Jamie Stevenson has been selected for the Great Britain team at the sixth Junior World Championships in Poland next month.
The towering shot putt star, currently studying at Loughborough, won selection to the prestigious event in Bydgoszcz, some 270 kilometres west of of Warsaw, between 8 and 13 July – despite falling short of the onerous qualifying standard set by the British team.
But although 18-year-old Stevenson, a former Haute Vallée and Highlands student, has yet to break the 19 metre barrier he has consistently been achieving putts of around 18 and a half. And his UK u20 championship winning putt of 18.47m at Bedford over the weekend – a championship meet record in an event that doubled as the IAAF British World Junior Trials – was achieved despite winds hitting 40 mph.
With his coach Geoff Capes, a former Olympian, putting forward his case, the selectors decided that had conditions been favourable Stevenson could have attained the 19 metre mark and so included him in the team. The Jersey Spartan athlete, a Island Games and Jeux des Iles medallist, leaves for Poland on 4 July and he will not be short of support with both parents, Rob and Sue, travelling to Poland to cheer him on.
