Athletics: Doncaster duo to captain Great Britain at Combined Events internationals

Liam Ramsay, a former Doncaster Athletic Club member, will lead the senior men’s team at the Indoor Combined Events international in France next weekend.

Aiden Davies will captain the men’s Under-23 team in an international event in Spain next month.

Ramsay recently successfully defended his England Athletics Combined Events Senior Heptathlon title at Sheffield.

The Edlington-based athlete, who now represents City of Sheffield, finished with a tally of 5.758 which puts him in seventh place in the all-time UK rankings.

Cusworth-based Davies, coached at Doncaster by Bruce Bewley, finished third in the event in addition to claiming the U23 title.

In setting a new record of 5,242 points – 237 up on his previous best set last year – the 20-year-old posted five new personal best performances.

Both Davies, who now holds both the national Indoor and Outdoor titles, and Ramsay, were shoe-in for the forthcoming internationals after their latest performances.

Coached by former decathlon international Mike Corden, Ramsay ended the first day of competition in pole position having won the shot (13.64m) and the high jump (2.02m) and finished second in the 60m (7.09 seconds), the long jump (7.08).

He got Day Two off to a winning start in the 60m hurdles (8.14 sec) and was second in the pole vault (4.40m). Ramsay also took the honours in the final event, the 1,000m.

Davies started his weekend with a new best time of 7.13 sec in the 60m sprint. He also set new figures (6.82m) in the long jump.

After dropping to fourth overall Davies climbed back into third place after beating both his previous best indoors and out in the shot.

Despite only having had a couple of training sessions at the event over the previous sixth months due to injury problem, Davies equalled his personal best of 1.90m in the high jump.

The 60m hurdles was another event where Davies was rusty but still managed to post a useful time of 8.92 sec.

With his main rival for the Under-23 title Michael Hogg, pulling out of the event due to injury, Davies found himself in pole position.

He equalled his best height (4.20m) in the pole vault but dropped a place.

But with Matthew Lee, who had overtaken him, missing the last event through injury he only needed to record a reasonable time to claim gold and bronze, which he did when finishing third in a time of 2 min 43 sec.