City of Portsmouth’s Serena Vincent impresses for Great Britain in European Throwing Cup

It was a strong team representing GB and the 17-year-old City of Portsmouth athlete really stepped up to the plate again as she came into the shot put ranked 12th with 17 of the best in Europe lining up.

She relishes the bigger competitions and put together a good series despite very tricky conditions at the Šamorín venue in Slovakia.

The European Throwing Cup is a really high standard, it is regarded as one of the strongest events of the season with many of the athletes including Serena having enjoyed impressive indoor campaigns.

It was an extremely cold day with a little light rain and a fairly brisk wind.

The conditions resulted in the whole field throwing under their best.

But Serena fared significantly better than her rivals and pulled out a 14m 59cm throw to finish the competition in a very respectable seventh position.

Netherlands athlete Jorinde van Klinken won the competition with a throw of 16.38m.

After moving up to the under-20 age group Serena had a fantastic indoor season.

She won the English Championships with a throw of 14.83m and won the Welsh Athletics International competing for England.

Also she won the South of England Championships and finished fifth at the senior British Championships in Birmingham.

Training has gone very well with her coaches Bronwin Carter and her dad Andrew.

Now the focus has switched to outdoors.

Serena will compete at a number of qualifying events over the coming three months to try to gain selection for the under-20 European Championships in Sweden in the summer.

She may also turn out at the City of Portsmouth club April Fools meeting as a pre-season warmer.

That event is on Tuesday, April 2 at the Mountbatten Centre with shot, discus and javelin, as well as long jump and high jump competitions.

On the track there will be a selection of events from 60m up to 3,000m.

The track programme will start at 6pm, along with the first field events the long jump and the javelin.

See Athletics Events for more details about how to enter.