ANDOVER AC’s Great Britain athlete Holly Mills can look back on another successful winter and look ahead to a new challenge for the 2019 outdoor season.

The indoor season can be a distraction to the hard training over the winter period for some athletes but Mills uses the indoor season to keep herself sharp in readiness for the summer season.

Her indoor season started by successfully defending her England Athletics National Under-20 Combined Events title with a new championship best performance, beating her own mark set the previous season.

The reward for winning this event was to represent Great Britain under-20s at an international match in Cardiff against some of the best multi event athletes in Europe from teams from Spain, France, Poland and Czech Republic.

This event proved to be the highlight of the indoor season for Mills as she showed that she is developing into a top multi event athlete with a series of personal bests in four of the five events.

A perfect start was made in the 60m hurdles with a new PB and fastest time of the day plus number ranking in the UK of 8.42secs.

With PB’s in both the high jump (1.75m) and shot putt (11.27m) she was in second position after three events.

However, a disappointing long jump saw her 100 points behind leader Maria Vicente from Spain going into the final event.

Mills led from the start to finish in the 800m clocking a new PB of 2:19.75, over five seconds better than her previous best.

With Vicente finishing nearly eight seconds, the two girls women finished tied on 4,216 points and and shared the gold medal. Mills' total is third on the UK all-time list and fourth in the World in 2019.

The British Universities Championships in Sheffield was the next competition for Mills where she came away with a silver medal in the long jump following a best jump of 6.16m.

A return to Sheffield the following week saw her complete her season at the England Athletics National Under-20 Championships where she picked up bronze in both the long jump and 60m hurdles.

Reflecting on the season Mills said: "There were some highs and lows over the indoor season and some of the performances were not what I had hoped for but it was again an honour to represent Great Britain and wear the GB kit.

"To produce a Championship Best Performance and finish the season ranked 4th in the world for pentathlon at under-20 and third on the UK All-Time list is amazing.

"Also to be ranked number one under-20 athlete in the UK for pentathlon and 60m hurdles and number two for long jump is great.

"I am now looking forward to the new challenge of the heptathlon this forthcoming outdoor season with the goal of being selected for Team GB to compete at the European under-20 Championships in Sweden in July."