ANNOUNCING OUR AWARD WINNERS from the inaugural Police UK Sports Awards, proudly sponsored by Axon, held last week at the National Police Chiefs Council in Manchester.
We are grateful to all our sponsors for supporting the event but in particular to XPS Administration for very generously sponsoring one of the main awards during the evening. Sports Team of the Year which was won by the Police Ladies Marathon Team, European Champions 2018. On the night the award was presented to two members of the team, PC Katherine Cousins from Lancashire and PC Lyndsey Eastman from West Yorkshire by Natalie Bevan from XPS Administration.
European Police Sport Championships take place only every four years. This nomination is for the PSUK Athletic Section Ladies Marathon Team who participated in the USPE Marathon in October 2018. On 28th October 2018, Dublin were host to these Championships. Individual and team awards are presented. For team awards it is 4/3 to score for men and ladies.
The Dublin Marathon is a well-known international event and attracts athletes from across the world. These top athletes along with USPE competitors are given a priority starting line at the front of the field of over 20,000 competitors.
PSUK Athletic Section selected athletes from across the country that achieved the qualifying time and for the ladies it’s a time of 3 hours 5 minutes. Only 4 women were selected out of a possible 6. This is the biggest platform that these ladies have competed on. Gaining selection to run for PSUK is an achievement itself and a proud occasion representing the national team. Team were, PC Carla Swithenbank from Gwent, DC Jill Collett from TVP, PC Lyndsey Eastman from West Yorkshire and PC Katherine Cousins from Lancashire.
Our ladies dominated the race. Carla had run only a couple of marathons with no coaching and never run without her Ipod before. She paced herself to perfection and smashed her pb without knowing it, winning the race in 2.46.13 giving PSUK a USPE winner. Unbelievable Jill also running a blinder of a race also smashing her pb with 2.47.46 putting her into 2nd place in front of Kaisa Kukk from Estonia in 2.51.45. Kaisa had a battle with PSUK Lyndsey who she only overtook in the last few hundred metres putting Lyndsey into 4th place with a time of 2.51.59 with yet again another pb. Katherine was not far behind and pushed hard to secure yet again another pb finishing 9th in 2.59.01 breaking that 3-hour barrier. The ladies stormed the team award taking Team Gold (8:25:58) with Germany silver (8:53:46) and France Bronze (9:28:37).
Very fitting that this year’s medal was designed to celebrate female participation, linking with the nationwide commemoration of Vótáil 100. Constance Markievicz, a key campaigner for Irish women’s voting rights.
Never before has PSUK Athletic Section had such a convincing set of results individually or as a team in USPE Marathon Championship. All the ladies ran superbly pushing themselves to support one another achieving some amazing personal results and an ultimate team Gold.
XPS Pensions Group is the largest pure pensions consultancy in the UK. We have benefits of scale – we have a breadth of experience to draw on and can invest in solutions for the good of our clients – yet we remain agile, able to respond quickly as the world around our clients shifts.
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Our unique structure means that we can make transparent, long-term investment decisions in our business for the good of our clients and pension scheme members.
We advise more than 1500 pension schemes and administer pensions for over 930,000 members and we employ 1,325 staff across 15 UK locations.