ATHLETICS: ANGELA Copson of Rugby & Northampton Athletics Club has been awarded a British Empire Medal (BEM) in the New Year’s Honours List for her services to running.
Copson has broken 48 British, European and world records or bests in the Over-60 and Over-65 age groups. She has achieved her records in distances ranging from 400 metres on the track, right through to the marathon, and exactly half of these records have been world-best times, with 33 of them being European.
From 2007 to 2016, Copson was ranked number one in the UK in 73 events and she has won 79 individual Championship medals from British, European and World Championships over track, cross country and road races in her age group.
68 of those were gold medals and she has won a medal in every single Championship event she has taken part in.
Of her 68 gold medals, ten have been in Masters World Championships, with another 13 in European Championships and 36 in BMAF Championships.
The remaining nine golds were won in an unprecedented nine consecutive victories in the British & Irish Masters International Cross Country from 2008 to 2016. This included four in the W60 category and five in the W65 and, in 2012, she was voted the European Masters Athlete of the Year.
On April 10, 2016, Copson became the oldest woman in history to break three hours 30 minutes for the marathon, when she recorded a time of 3:24.54 in Manchester, at the age of 68 years and 356 days.
That achievement gave her a current total of 30, officially recognised single-age world records in distances from 3000m to the marathon, on track and road.
Copson, 69, has only been running for ten years after initially taking up the sport to raise money for heart research at John Radcliffe hospital, where her husband had been treated.
