After 9 races of fast and furious racing for almost 400 runners, this year’s South Wales Winter Hill Series winners were a familiar pair. Katie Ironside (Mynyddwyr de Cymru) and Wyndham Turner (Mynydd Du) are your repeat winners adding 2024 victories to their 2023 success!

Wyndham continued his streak by narrowly beating out last years 2nd placer Jon Ford (Mynydd Du). After several extremely close races Wyndham put the hammer down to record a high scoring solo performance at Cwm Nant y Groes to secure the series win. Wyndham won both the Summer and Winter Series last year so this extends his series streak to 3 in a row. Wilf Evans (CDF Runners) took 3rd place jumping up 50 points and 4 places from 7th last year. Both Jon and Wilf are edging closer to Wyndham so they'll have their sights set on dethroning Wyndham later this year.

Katie also made it two in a row for the Winter Series after narrowly missing out in the Summer Series. Behind her Sandra Helk (Vegan Runners) jumped up from 4th last year knocking last years 2nd placer Briony Latter (Mynyddwyr de Cymru) down to 3rd. 

As always, the V40 category was hotly contested with many runners putting in 5 or more races.  2022 Summer Series champion Chris Medcalf (San Domenico RC) took the win over Dean Perry (Brycheiniog) and Wes SHELDON (Mynydd Du) despite turning 50 before the series even started.The V50s will need to look out next year! On the woman's side, Donna Grant (MDC) took a commanding win over Natalie Taylor (Mynydd Du) and Helen Jopling (MDC).

The V50s were a shootout between Mynydd Du and Chepstow Harriers. Wendy Sharpe-Nash (Chepstow) took the win over the Mynydd Du pairing of Rhian Probert and Janet Richards in the F category. In the M/Open category it was Mynydd Du that won out with descending king Ian Whistance (Mynydd Du) taking the win over Matthew Lawson (Chepstow) and Mark Cameron (Unattached).

The usual suspects were all present in the V60 category. Flora Gunner (Croft Ambrey RC) continued her form from the Summer series to take the win over Rona Davies (Mynydd Du) and Ellie Salisbury (Eryri). For M/Open it was an MDC battle at the front with Simon Darke repeating his success from last year leaving Andy Stott to settle for 2nd. Alan Stanley (Unattached) was 3rd.

In the super vets Don Powell (Basingstoke & Mid Hants AC) and Gary Gunner (Croft Ambrey RC) repeated their victories from last year in the V70 and V75 categories respectively. Guy Whitmarsh (Croft Ambrey RC) was the winner in the brand new V80 category!

Full results are available on the South Wales Winter Hill Series page.

Hugh Aggleton Memorial Award

I am sure most people are familiar with Hugh who sadly died in 2022, the South Wales Winter Series has been named in his memory for the last two years. The award is intended to go to someone who has made a notable contribution and the trophy was kindly created and donated by Andy Creber.

This was first awarded last year to Martin and Kay Lucas for their outstanding contribution to the series since its beginnings and South Wales fell running in general.

A hard act to follow but the person we have chosen this year seems over recent years to have kept an extraordinary number of races both in this series and the wider fell running community going. Not only that but he has an extremely useful website fellrace.com which is virtually a one stop shop for South Wales races.

The second recipient of the Hugh Aggleton memorial award announced at the final race of the 2024/25 South Wales Winter series at Hatterall is Paul Dodd.