SUPERB EVENT

Competing in her first ever Heptathlon Mills went into the event looking to score enough points in order to meet the British Athletics qualifying standard for the European U20 Championships later this year.

The Andover athlete knew that a good start in one of her stronger events, the 100m hurdles, would be a platform to build upon.

She did not disappoint as she ran her second fastest time ever of 13.54 seconds to take an early lead in the competition.

A below par high jump of 1.69m saw Mills lose the lead but a new personal best of 12.36m in the shot put saw her regain the lead after three events. The final event of day one was the 200m and a new personal best time of 24.30secs to end the day on 3,523 points, 170 points ahead of the second placed athlete.

The first event of day two was the long jump, which is one of Mills’ strongest events.

After a first round jump of 5.99m followed by a no jump the Andover athlete produced a new lifetime best jump of 6.36m in the final round to increase her lead in the competition to over 300 points.

The penultimate event was the javelin, which is her weakest event and although she threw a new best of 26.47m her lead at the top had reduced to just 60 points with the 800m to come.

However, Mills was the fastest of the field on paper and this proved to be the case as she ran a personal best time of 2:19.71, some 10 seconds ahead of her pursuers.

This saw her finished the day on 5,722 points, 170 points ahead of the second placed athlete but more importantly she had secured enough points

to achieve the qualifying standard for the European Championships.

This is the third qualifying standard Mills has achieved having recently achieved both the 100m hurdles and long jump marks.

Mills will now have to wait until the British Athletics selection meeting at the end of June to see if she has made the GB Team for the trip to Sweden to compete against the best under-20 athletes in Europe.