Alan Toward (August 2017)
(Born Newcastle on Tyne 31/10/92)
Alan Toward, a field events exponent, who works as a strength conditioning coach. He is from Gateshead and was at Northumbria University. He is coached by Nick Ridgeon and is a member of Sheffield & Dearne AC, previously with Enfield & Haringey and first of all with Gateshead.
On 31/7/2017, in windy conditions, he won the CAU Inter-Counties & England AAA’s Championship title at Bedford. He won with 57’59 with the 2k discus, 2nd was George Armstrong of Newham & Essex Beagles 55’95 and 3rd Greg Thompson of Shaftesbury Barnet with 55’21.
When then did Alan start seriously to do the discus?
“I was 15/16. It was just when I was doing schools competition, without realising it was the English schools’
‘First of all I started doing the shot and then moved to the discus after that’
(As an Under 17 he threw the 1.5k discus out to 39’34, when coming 2nd at Sports City on 6/9/08 and, that was after winning the Inter Schools meeting at Middlesbrough in June of that year.
Before then as an under 15 he put the shot (4k) 12’.32 for 2nd place in an inter Schools county match at Gateshead, where he came 1st in the high jump with 1.65.)
His best performance to date in that event was 15.27 at Wigan when he came 2nd in the North of England league Division One in July 2017.
Regarding his speciality the discus The IAAF listed him as competing for Great Britain in a European meeting in Sweden, when he came 4th with 55’.53 but, he did compete abroad on a few other occasions.
He won the British Universities Championship 2016 with 55’53.
His best discus throw was at the Loughborough Winter throws (including Euro Trials) when he did 59’33 on the 26th of February, achieving 2nd place).
What did he consider the most outstanding result in his career so far?
“Definitely, the season when I threw over 53 metres in 2015 that was probably my best season as, I went from 47 metres to 56 in one year.“
At the time of writing this, he looked towards the possibility of making the Commonwealth Games in 2018 “I will try any competition to get the required standard of 60.00metres.”
Having achieved a personal best at the shot and the discus in 2017 he should count on it being very good year, what ever happens.