Major titles sealed - Slovakia next as Serena Vincent gets Great Britain call

It has been a phenomenal start to the year with the City of Portsmouth athlete producing a succession of brilliant indoor performances.

She’s won the southern under-20 title (14.36m), the England Athletics national under-20 title with 14.83m and the Welsh Athletics International for England with a throw of 14.68m. 

Now the 17-year-old has been called up by British Athletics, among a team of nine athletes, for the European Throwing Cup, which will be held in Samorin, Slovakia, from Saturday, March 9 to Sunday, March 10.

The fantastic work in training with her coaches and the superb results achieved will give her great belief going into the competition and the pressure will be off.

She said: ‘I am excited for it, it’s going to be tough. Any international is a difficult competition. It is going to be great experience, I’m really excited. Throwing against current world leaders will be brilliant. The best people in Europe will be going to this competition.

‘The team is really strong and it will be nice to be among the senior internationals who are going there.

‘I’ve never been to Slovakia. I know it will be cold but, to be fair, England is pretty cold anyway. I have no pressure on me to medal or anything, I just want to throw a personal best.

‘If I can throw the qualifying European under-20 standard distance of 15m that would be fantastic. In my first year as an under-20 I would love to do that, I really do think I can.’

Nobody would bet against the City star achieving the European qualifying standard, especially after such a record of achievement already this year.

Serena added: ‘I am over the moon with how the season has gone so far and I want to hit that 15m mark as soon as I can. 

‘At the weekend in Cardiff I did throw over 15m but I fell out the front of the circle so it didn’t count. Once you have done it once you can adjust to it better and I will know what it feels like next time.

‘It was good to win the competition and I got a joint championship record.

‘Good competition brings the best out of you and winning the nationals was really tough. I was leading for four rounds, then in the fifth round I was knocked down to second. Then I managed to get my personal best to win the competition with my last throw.’

Serena also competed in the British Senior Championships indoors in Birmingham and performed strongly there as well.

She said: ‘That was amazing. I got a personal best there and was able to feed off the atmosphere. To go up against the best in Britain was great and to be in the warm-up area with them. I was thinking “should I really be here?”. It was a really good experience.’