THERE was a magnificent haul of seven gold medals for East Lancashire athletes at the North of England Senior and U20 Track and Field Championships at SportCity in Manchester.

Pole vaulter Holly Bleasdale became the fourth local athlete to reach the qualifying mark for the European Junior Championships when she jumped 4.05m, reaching the landmark four-metre mark for the first time in her career.

The Blackburn Harrier has shown a meteoric rise up the rankings since she first cleared 3.10m at an indoor competition barely six months ago, and in Manchester she even made an attempt at the World Junior Championship standard of 4.15m.

Her latest effort raises her own Blackburn Harriers senior and junior records, and it equals the best outdoors by a British U20 this year.

Last year I described Sophie Hitchon’s feat of winning the U20 and senior hammer titles as an ‘unusual double’, but the 17-year old repeated the dose with 60m plus throws in each competition, her best being 61.56m against the seniors.

Hitchon’s training partner Sarah Henton took the senior discus with 45.37m, and there was a fifth success for Blackburn Harriers when in-form Luke Evans won the U20s 200m in 22.34 seconds to add to his silver in the 100m.

Former Blackburn star Becky White continued her comeback with a winning 12.47m in the senior triple jump to reverse the positions in the Lancashire Championships when Chorley AC’s Kelly Hilton had erased Becky’s championship record.

It was Hilton’s turn to settle for second this time around with 12.01m as Hyndburn’s Nicola Breaks took fifth in 11.43m.

Abby Leigh Edmundson leads Blackburn’s next generation of triple jumpers and struck silver in the U20 competition with 10.94m and taking our jumps medals to five, Pendle’s Eleanor Markendale cleared 5.70m for silver in the long jump.

While Hilton missed out on gold, her Chorley AC club didn’t as senior Eloise Manger added nearly 10 metres to last year’s distance in the javelin to upgrade her silver.

She needed most of that improvement to 48.10m as GB heptathlete Jessica Ennis threw 46.47m after refusing a place in the televised European Team Championships in Portugal to take part.

The hurdles yielded one more medal as Blackburn’s Liam Monaghan was third in the U20s 110m race in 15.95 seconds, and there were near misses for three senior hurdlers.

Markendale was sixth in the women’s 100m race in 15.42 seconds, Christina Carr of Blackburn clocked 1min 7.88 seconds for fifth in the 400m and Burnley’s sole entry Danny Eckersley was sixth in the men’s 400m recording 55.40 seconds.