Sydney Taylor has taken the top prize at this year's Bob Lewis Memorial Meeting, winning the £100 best performance of the day award for her 40.45 in the 300m on 30th August. The award, like the other cash prizes on the day, is decided on World Athletics points rather than raw time, and Taylor's mark was enough to outscore every other performance across the whole meeting.
Taylor, who runs for Hillingdon AC in the U16 age group, competes primarily in the 300m, and her season shows why 40.45 was capable of topping the points table. Her personal best of 39.84 was set at Walton in May, running in the UK Youth Development League, and she has been consistently inside 41 seconds all year. She followed that with a run of national-level results, including second place in 40.31 at the England Athletics U18 & U16 Championships in Bedford in July and fifth place in 40.74 at the English Schools Championships in Birmingham the same month, competing in a final against U17 athletes despite being a year younger in the U16 category.
Her range extends across the sprints too. Taylor set personal bests over 100m and 200m this year, running 12.24 at Walton in May and 25.03 at Guildford in August, both season highlights that came either side of her 300m work. She has represented Berkshire at county level throughout the year, winning the county title over 300m in May, and is set to represent Berkshire again at the upcoming Inter Counties Championships.
Taylor has history with the Bob Lewis Memorial Meeting specifically. She competed at last year's edition, finishing third in the 300m in 41.40 and fifth in the 100m in 13.09, and has shaved a full second off that 300m time over the past twelve months to return this year as the meeting's overall best performer. Away from competing, she also helps coach the U12 quad kids group at Hillingdon AC, work that sits alongside a training and racing programme that has taken her from Bracknell and Reading through to Crystal Palace and Birmingham over the past two seasons.
The World Athletics points system behind the Bob Lewis prizes exists to make exactly this kind of comparison possible, allowing a 300m run to be judged on equal terms against sprints, hurdles and distance events elsewhere on the programme. For an athlete with Taylor's progression over the past year, a 40.45 run in testing conditions on the day was enough to be recognised as the standout performance of the meeting, ahead of the second and third placed performances that also picked up cash prizes. It is a less common event on the domestic circuit than the 100m or 200m for senior athletes, which makes finding regular, high-quality 300m racing part of the challenge for athletes who specialise in it.
With Inter Counties competition still to come this season and a personal best of 39.84 already banked, Taylor's next target will likely be closing the gap further on that mark as she continues to compete at county and national level through the U16 age group. Her progression from a T-shirt prize at last year's Bob Lewis Memorial Meeting to this year's top cash award reflects a season in which she has taken time off her personal bests across the 100m, 200m and 300m alike, and her return to Kingston next year is one the club will be glad to see.
The Bob Lewis Memorial Meeting is run by Momentum Sports and sponsored by TF1 Athletic and Weir Archer Fitness. Full results and more photos from the day will follow.